Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the first thing that strikes me about yesterday's excellent debate is that whatever we on the Back Benches may think, our Front Benches—or at least the Front-Bench spokesmen on this issue—are in broad agreement. They want an 80 per cent elected House. That must give the rest of us some food for thought.
	My right honourable friend Jack Straw backed the 50 per cent option; indeed, he predicated a whole White Paper on that option and was soundly defeated, not just in the Commons but within his own party. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, having argued persuasively for the status quo, cheerfully went on to back the 80 per cent option, acknowledging as he did that his own Back Bench in this House would not support him any more than his party supported that option in the Commons. The Liberal Democrats want a 100 per cent elected House but will settle for what they can get—and who can blame them? Of course, the Cross Benches rightly prefer an 80 per cent elected element because it preserves that independent expertise, which we all acknowledge is such an important and valuable attribute in this House. Meanwhile, the House of Commons, the elected House, has voted decisively for a 100 per cent elected Lords—and, as Jack Straw remarked last week, the genie cannot be put back into its bottle.
	How will the Government pursue the consensus without which, we are told, we cannot proceed? The Government will be against any vote in this House for 100 per cent appointed Peers, but they are clearly deeply uneasy about the Commons' decision for 100 per cent elected Peers. There is no consensus between the parties in the Commons and it is pretty clear that there will be no consensus between the two Houses, but the Government have said that they will seek consensus between the Commons vote and the Lords vote, and the Lord Chancellor said that the cross-party group—that is, Mr Straw and the Front-Benchers—will reconvene.
	I return to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, yesterday about a range of views in that group, a point elegantly sidestepped by his noble friend Lord Strathclyde. I put it this time to my noble and learned friend. How will Back-Bench opinion in the political parties be represented? We have had no such representation hitherto, on that group—no one to argue for what I suspect this House will vote for. A consensus based on the current cross-party group will be no consensus at all; it will be a sham.
	The Government's unease is understandable because the decisive vote on the 100 per cent model has clear implications—at least it does for any person of common sense—for the primacy of the House of Commons. That may be why such large numbers voted in another place for the 100 per cent appointed and 100 per cent elected Peers. Some 70-odd did so, by my calculations, including 60 or so of my own party. That is an impressive number voting for two apparently contradictory positions—and, in time, those 70 will have to reach a decision to back one option or the other. However, I think that their vote at present is defensible, because this is an argument about hybridity.
	The argument is that hybridity will confirm legitimacy because this House will have an elected element, which my noble and learned friend claimed provided what he called democratic connection, or the legitimacy claimed by many others. We can be legitimate, but not too legitimate, because legitimacy would challenge Commons primacy. The 20 per cent appointed Peers will be the bulwark claimed against a challenge to the primacy of the House of Commons.
	The 80 per cent political or elected Members of this House will still believe that their individual legitimacy is every bit as valid as the individual legitimacy of those elected to another place. They will recognise that the cap put on the elected element in this House will be there to protect those in the Commons to the disadvantage of the electoral mandate that they have in this House. Moreover, the first time that a vote in this House turns on the 20 per cent appointed votes, there will be a constitutional crisis. An elected majority will simply not tolerate being overruled by an unelected minority, nor should they.
	What of the relationship between the two Houses? Why should an elected Member in this House subvert the mandate from his own electorate to the mandate of an MP in another place? That is not democracy; it is a doctrine of, "all elections are equal, but some are more equal than others". It is this that will be used to protect the primacy of the Commons. That primacy is not challenged—it is right that the Commons has primacy, and there is no question of it. Members in the Commons are elected, we are not—end of story. But sooner or later—and, given the vibrancy of our politics, it will be sooner—80 per cent elected Members of this House will challenge another place, will feel an equal legitimacy with the all-elected Commons and the 20 per cent artificial constraint will not hold. It will be attacked and defeated and primacy will go.
	The truth is that last week's vote in the Commons has put primacy into play. The all-party Cunningham committee said unanimously that at this point the conventions between the two Houses must be reconsidered. It was a unanimous committee position, adopted by unanimous resolution in both Houses. How would this vital issue be examined again? We already know what the Government wants on the conventions: the status quo. But who will they consult? Will there be another "understanding" with the Front-Benchers, with no Back-Bench representation? Or will the Cunningham committee reconvene? There is only one respectable answer: the issue must be dealt with by an all-party committee of both Houses. No other means is acceptable, and I ask my noble and learned friend to confirm unequivocally that that will be the case.
	If this House has a majority of elected Members, the primacy of the Commons as currently understood will go. The argument that it can be protected is both unsustainable and undemocratic: unsustainable because neither electors nor elected will abide by it, and undemocratic because it denies the elected the power to act on behalf of the electors. Democracy is not just about voting, but about voting for people who will act on the basis of the mandate that the electorate has given them. The election of political members of this House will give them such a mandate. It is misleading to give the electorate the right to vote without the right of the elected to deliver on that vote. A mandate without meaning to deliver is meaningless; worse, it is a deceit.
	I shall vote against all the options on hybridity. Hybridity is a connection not to democracy but to constitutional uncertainty and electoral unfairness. I shall vote for a 100 per cent appointed House. I could vote for a 100 per cent elected House, but only if there is a new settlement between the two Houses reflecting that all elections to the British Parliament really are equal, without some being more equal than others.

Lord Livsey of Talgarth: That could be entirely representative of the country. I am not saying that this is the answer; I am saying that it should be investigated. I know that there is great scepticism about this, as can be heard, but the future of the House rests on accountability, and indeed legitimacy through election to it. That, surely, is the way ahead.

The Archbishop of York: My Lords, I, too, share the view that Jack Straw has tried his best to reconcile conflicting opinions about Lords reform. However, in my mind the key issue is how to maintain freedom for the nation and for each and every individual within it. In modern Britain, a two-tier Parliament has, to date, provided a very effective means for this to happen. The House of Commons represents a form of democracy in which everyone aged 18 and above has a right to vote for its Members. It has been throughout the previous century, and even longer, a symbol of British freedom and, indeed, since the Magna Carta there has been a culture in this country of ensuring that the rights of all could be seen to be valued.
	However, full election in both Houses may not be in the interests of freedom. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, highlighted some of the problems that need to be addressed. Our 21st century fashion for a particular form of democracy may, in the end, not give us freedom; election and freedom are not necessarily coterminous. Voting does indeed provide a peaceful way of changing government, giving a political party to form Her Majesty's Government or become Her Majesty's Opposition in Parliament, but it does not necessarily guarantee freedom or success. Given voter apathy and low turnouts, the House of Commons should take the warning of the Teacher of Galilee of taking the beam out of its own eye before it tries to take the speck of dust out of the eye of your Lordships' House. Energy should be spent rather in persuading the electorate to reconnect with politics. That is a far more urgent and necessary task.
	Where is the empirical evidence for the bold claim in the White Paper, at paragraph 6.12, that "in many people's eyes", the House of Lords,
	"still lacks the ... legitimacy to carry out its current role"?
	If I am not mistaken, a survey soon after the last general election suggested that two-thirds of the public backed the House of Lords' right to delay unpopular legislation, even if it comes out of the party in government. What gives the House its legitimacy is simply this: it is established in law and is part of the parliamentary constitutional agreement of this country. For me accountability in the end has to do with transparency. Is what we do here transparent or not? If it is, then it is legitimate. No one serves in your Lordships' House or the House of Commons until they have taken their oath of allegiance to the Queen. That is what gives Members a seat.
	L Blake, barrister at law, in his book, The Royal Law, locates for the reader where our freedom really lies. He says that few people realise how important for our civil liberties are the words of the coronation service for the sovereign—a service embedded in an Act of Parliament, the Coronation Oath Act 1689.
	The service is not a meaningless pageant. Blake says:
	"The Coronation Service is where the Divine Law is placed before the law of the State, acknowledged and reverenced. It reminds us of the source of all our law, in truth and in justice. We should not forget the words in which are conveyed the truth which inspires our Common Law".
	As a 13th-century lawyer, Bracton, rightly said, the king or queen,
	"must not be under man but under God and the law, for the law makes the king".
	In forcing King John to sign the Magna Carta, were the barons not insisting that he observed this principle and his coronation oath?
	The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford spoke yesterday of Parliament needing to take into account the spiritual dimension of people as it legislates—that beliefs affect people, and that the voices of a religious life needed to be heard. The presence of the Lords Spiritual is a necessary reminder of that. I want to go further and say that the Queen in Parliament is sovereign, but is also Queen in law, in council, and in the Executive. That is the constitutional arrangement. Are we going to preserve it? The Lords Spiritual remind Parliament of the Queen's coronation oath and of that occasion when the divine law was acknowledged as the source of all law. We do not see ourselves are representatives, but as connectors with the people and parishes of England. Ours is a sacred trust—to remind your Lordships' House of the common law of this nation, in which true religion, virtue, morals and law are always intermingled; they have never been separated.
	As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, reminded us yesterday, the aim of your Lordships' House has always been to provide a wise check and balance for the nation using the diversity of skills and experience in revising legislation, delaying ill thought or hasty legislation, being deliberative and acting as a bastion of democracy by not allowing a party in government to extend its life beyond the timetable set in the Parliament Act. That is the role of this House. Your Lordships' House has always been in the interests not just of democracy, but of that higher freedom which supports our values and the culture of this nation.
	It was right that the House of Lords be reformed, but why not allow time to assess whether further reform is needed? Is not evolution a better way, compared to activism and pressure to modernise? We should think very carefully before losing the breadth of experience of hereditary Lords, appointed Lords, retired Supreme Court Justices and others with the automatic right to sit here. In an age where our House of Commons is ever more homogenous, with more and more professional MPs in all parties and less and less breadth of experience from a wide range of operational life, we should note that election does not bring an age range of 18 to 90, the breadth of experience through luck in life, sheer hard work which leads to some appointments, specialist gifts in areas of life, and conscience and values which stem even from beyond the elector. These make for wisdom and, most importantly, freedom—freedom to think and say what is right, freedom to check and balance legislation for the whole nation, and freedom to learn from the diversity within the House itself. I have been here a short time, and I am most impressed by what I hear, see and experience.
	Blake's book also shows that there is a government behind Government, with a greater purpose and permanence than the changing spectrum of party-political strife. This government consists of institutions, mostly of medieval origin—the monarchy, Parliament, common law, jury system, church, universities, the police and the Armed Forces. The powers working through these institutions, which meet in the House of Lords, are made available to the Government of the day. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, told us yesterday that who makes the law must get the consent of the people. What would he make of Lord Atkin in the case of Donoghue v Stevenson, in which the law of the duty of care towards one's neighbour was clearly established, based on the story of the good Samaritan? What about Lord Denning in many of his judgments, where he was clearly not interpreting law but making it? What matters in the end is how people behave when they get here. Are they equal to the task? Will the suggested changes lead this House to be a better House?
	Despite the apparent surface of fairness of a second elected House—it may seemingly be in the interests of democracy—it may ultimately fail this nation in its desire to value freedom. We should think very carefully to be sure that the rumours of self-interest of various parties within the House of Lords are not merely a smokescreen to cover something which we might miss horrendously once lost, never to be recovered. For those reasons, I shall vote strongly for option 1, a House fully appointed by a royal commission established by statute. I may look at the possibility of a hybrid, but I have not yet heard the argument to persuade me, and would need to.

Lord Desai: My Lords, in every debate in which I have spoken on House of Lords reform for the past 11 years, I have argued for a wholly elected House. I never thought that such a dream of mine would ever have a chance of fulfilment, but the House of Commons made a revolutionary decision last Wednesday. It would not do to examine the entrails of that decision—how many tactical votes there were this and that way. If you start down that road, you could unpick every other decision of the House of Commons, so let us not do that. Grown-up people were given a choice and made a choice; it is our duty to examine its consequences.
	Even an 80:20 hybrid House would not be a stable solution. In attempts to reform this House in 1999, a big wedge of 75 or 92 hereditaries was left in. Now we know that that will have to go, because it is no longer tenable. If we implement a hybrid House, very soon the 20 per cent will be the first victims of the next stage of reform, because reform of the House of Lords would not stop there. We should actually grasp the nettle and see what the consequences of that revolutionary decision by the House of Commons are. It is revolutionary because, again and again, a chance was given to another place to make up its mind and it failed to do so. After 96 years, it has done so.
	It is true that if we have an all-elected House of Lords, it is a new constitutional arrangement. The status quo will not last, and all the conventions that we have carefully fashioned will have to be re-examined. We may have to face up to a written constitution because, unless it is written down, old conventions based on a system when this House was unelected and the other place was elected will no longer suffice. As my noble friend Lady Symons said, if people are elected both here and there, all elections have to be treated the same way. This is the time for us to give up our prejudices and frankly examine what is going on.
	In this debate, I have found our self-regard astonishing, and the contempt we have for elections and democracy amazing. I do not know how many of the ex-MPs who have come here suddenly found that, from being ugly elected ducklings, they became beautiful appointed swans. Why do we fear that, if there were elections to this House, no good candidates would come—that only third-rate people would come, because all the first- and second-rate people had been exhausted already? If you give somebody a chance of independence—of serving here for 15 years and not being worried about re-election—some good people will want to come here. It is up to us to devise methods in which we can make sure that nominations come not just from political parties but, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said, from a variety of bodies—not for an appointed Chamber, but for people to submit themselves for election. I do not see why we should not have a wide open list; let the parties nominate, but let lots of other people nominate and let us see what the people of this country decide. If they are convinced, as we think that they are convinced, that the present arrangements are good, they will try and reproduce the present arrangements when they have the choices for elections.
	We should not prejudge the issue by saying that elections are no good, that the candidates will be no good, that we are the best and that any attempt to displace us from here would be a constitutional disaster. I remind noble Lords who were here before 1999 that our debates then were full of dire warnings that if the hereditaries were eliminated it would be constitutional vandalism; that our great unwritten constitution and our beautiful traditions of freedom would be destroyed. What do we find now? Everyone thinks that they own that reform and that they actually made it. They say, "The 1999 reforms have made this House much better and much more legitimate; why do we need more change?". That is the pattern, not just in the House but in the country: every time change is threatened it is opposed. When change happens, suddenly it is owned and all opposition is forgotten. I am sure that the Magna Carta was opposed by some—and so on down the line.
	I do not agree with the most reverend Primate that we have always had freedom and democracy from the word go. Women did not have the franchise until 1916. What kind of freedom was it when half the population did not have the right to vote? Workers did not have the right to vote until the late 19th century and not fully until the beginning of the 20th. Democracy is a progressive process. We are not yet at the best level and until this House is elected, we will not be at the best level of democracy. We have no reason to fear that if somehow we were removed the world would come to an end. I have the humility to believe that perhaps there are other people, maybe not as good as I am, who, once they arrive here and have settled down for a few months, they could become as good as me—perhaps—dare I say?—even better.
	Let us give the reforms a chance and let us make quite sure that we are not churlish and are not seen to be people defending our narrow vested interests.

Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I rise to speak to the Motion that will stand in my name on tomorrow's Order Paper. I wish to make it absolutely clear right from the start that I am not opposed to reform of your Lordships' House. I therefore need to explain my Motion, which calls for the composition to remain as it is—anyway, for the time being.
	Your Lordships will recall that the House of Lords Act 1999, when first introduced, provided for the full and complete removal of all hereditary Peers, including the two great hereditary offices of state, namely the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earl Marshal. At that time, of course, the Conservative Peers could command a considerable majority in your Lordships' House, especially with the hereditary Peers who then belonged to the Conservative Party and could have delayed the passage of that Bill to the point that it could have been enacted only by means of the Parliament Act. As everyone knows, the Parliament Act is a blunt instrument for its stated purpose and at least involves considerable delay.
	The Government therefore entered into negotiations with the leader of the Conservative Peers in the House of Lords at that time, my noble friend, the then Viscount Cranborne, now of course the Marquess of Salisbury. The essence of that agreement is well known: 90 hereditary Peers, elected from among themselves, would be allowed to remain, being topped up by by-elections as necessary; and the two offices of state to which I have referred would also continue to be Members of your Lordships' House. The noble and learned Lord the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who we understand was the principal government interlocutor with my noble friend, subsequently gave a clear and unqualified undertaking to the effect that the hereditary Peers so excepted from the provisions of the 1999 Act would remain until the process of Lords reform was complete.
	By no stretch of the imagination can any of the proposals in Motions 1 to 7 which will be before your Lordships' House tomorrow be described as completion of the reform process so far as your Lordships' House is concerned. Nothing is said about the role of the new Chamber, the powers of the new Chamber, the arrangements by which Members will be either appointed or elected, the place of the Bishops, or many of the other important matters that will need to be decided before any Bill can be drafted let alone enacted.
	Thus I believe firmly that reform of the House of Lords—which, I say again, I most certainly do not oppose in principle—must be a comprehensive reform and not piecemeal reform as we have had so far. The 1999 Act was the first piece of piecemeal reform. There should be no more until the Government are ready with thought-through plans for this momentous change that have been agreed by the other place and agreed on a cross-party basis, as the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, suggested.
	I suspect that the majority of your Lordships are in favour of a largely or even wholly appointed House. As it happens, I take a different view. I am in favour of a largely elected House with a smallish number of appointed Members to include, for example, the retired Chiefs of Staff and the two ex officio hereditary Members to whom I referred earlier. But I also believe that change in that direction would necessitate some increase in the available powers. It is simply not credible to suggest that persons of quality could be found to go through all the rigmarole of election, including exclusion from standing for the other place, just to join a revising Chamber. So whatever powers may initially be granted to a newly elected second Chamber, they will, as sure as night follows day, soon appear inadequate.
	I do not believe that that is what honourable and right honourable Members voted for last week. Indeed I am much mystified by the outcome of those votes. I have not laboured through all the figures but I am told that 70 or so honourable Members from the party opposite—and maybe from my own party—voted both for a largely elected House and also for a largely appointed House. It is all very puzzling. I cannot believe that, in voting for a largely elected House, they were thinking of the proposition quite correctly put by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons: that an elected House is a House with more powers come what may.
	More importantly, the Government's present plans are a departure from the categorical undertaking given to facilitate the passage of the 1999 Act, and are, furthermore, incoherent and confused. For myself, I stand ready to consider and perhaps to support a full and thought-through comprehensive reform proposal for your Lordships' House. What we have before us is nothing of the sort. So let us leave matters as they are until such time as the Government are able to present a full reform proposal for our consideration.
	I have been a Member of your Lordships' House for 44 years. I have no talent and no brains but I do have the experience of those 44 years, which has taught me one thing at least—that an undertaking given in the circumstances which I have described is absolutely binding. I invite the noble and learned Lord the present Lord Chancellor to be guided accordingly.

The Earl of Glasgow: My Lords, I feel justified in speaking in this heavily oversubscribed debate for two reasons. First, I was the first person to make a television documentary on the House of Lords; that was in 1970, a few years after the Wilson Government had seriously attempted to reform the Lords and failed. Incidentally, it was the House of Lords, not the Commons, which first allowed television cameras into the Palace of Westminster. Secondly, as a hereditary Peer, I have already been abolished once and I do not particularly want to be abolished again. Not quite yet anyway; it really is very unsettling.
	The Wilson Government's attempt to reform this House in 1968 collapsed because of the famous unholy alliance between the left and right wings of the two major parties. The right, led by Enoch Powell, believed that the House of Lords had historic legitimacy and that, although it should be allowed to evolve the change organically, it could not be bisected or hacked about without doing it fatal damage. Let us remember that in those days it was an overwhelmingly hereditary and Conservative House and, from the Conservative point of view, no doubt that was no bad thing.
	By the way, at that time Enoch Powell had just completed a 671-page tome entitled, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages, with the subtitle, A History of the English House of Lords up to 1540. He tried to sell me a copy but I found the thought of actually having to read it a little too daunting.
	On the left wing of the Labour Party, the view succinctly expressed by Michael Foot was that the House of Commons was the only democratically elected Chamber and that, as such, it should be supreme and the House of Lords should be abolished. However, if total abolition was not acceptable to Parliament, the next best thing was to retain the Lords as the self-evidently undemocratic and absurdly unfair body that it was in the hope that it would eventually become completely discredited and wither away. The last thing that he and his supporters wanted was a reformed House of Lords, because that might give it some legitimacy and therefore a right to challenge the elected House of Commons. It is perhaps not surprising that similar arguments are still being expressed here in this debate.
	In the event, in 1968, as most of us know, that unholy alliance of the right and left succeeded in torpedoing the Government's plans for Lords reform and the attempt was abandoned. However, it struck me at the time—and in those days I think that I was a more-or-less objective observer—that, in spite of its anachronistic and unbalanced nature, the House of Lords seemed to work surprisingly well. A predominantly hereditary and Conservative House was only too aware of the precariousness of its constitutional position and therefore very careful not to be seen to obstruct the will of the elected House, even when it passionately disagreed with it. The Conservatives employed a sort of internal self-censorship. Only when confident that it had public opinion on its side did it dare to bare its teeth and, even then, it would almost certainly give way.
	A House of Lords that was primarily concerned with its own survival seemed to work in practice but, of course, it did not begin to work in theory. In the mean time, I was very struck by the high standard of debate in the Lords. Peers tended to speak on subjects and issues only when they knew what they were talking about. Now that most of us hereditary Peers have been ejected and a much greater number of appointed life Peers is here, it is still the quality of the debates and the ability to amend Bills through intelligent reasoning and argument that shows this House at its best. It is particularly during the debates on amendments, when sheer weight of knowledge and professional expertise compel the Government to change their mind, that I feel most proud of being a Member of this House, and, as I think we all agree, its primary job is to be an effective revising Chamber.
	However, in order to remain an effective revising Chamber, the House needs to be composed, as it now is, of wise men and wise women and experts and representatives of minority interests, with only a limited number of professional politicians. Yet it seems that the view of the Commons and the official policy of my own party is to convert this House into a Chamber of professional politicians—not top-rate politicians either; the most able ones will surely look for a seat in the House of Commons, where real power will continue to reside.
	Scrutinising legislation, amending Bills and debating important issues, then, is what this House does best. That is its purpose, and its skill is due to the expertise, wisdom, experience and specialised knowledge of its Members. How could that be better achieved by a House made up of what I would regard as second-rate professional politicians? Do we really want a dumbed-down second Chamber to match increasingly dumbed-down television and newspapers? Surely we must seek to preserve the best qualities of this House and not throw the baby out with the bathwater in the name of democratic legitimacy.
	That is why I believe that we must continue with an appointed House, although we could of course have 20 per cent of its Members elected if that made us feel better. Only by appointing Members can we engineer the right mix and ensure that some of the most able and experienced people in our country can be Members here. The only real issue is: who does the appointing? The cash for peerages scandal has clearly discredited the present system. Perhaps it is the members of the proposed independent Appointments Commission that should be democratically elected—or some of them, anyway. But that is just a thought and a subject for a whole new debate.

Lord Bilimoria: My Lords, what we are debating today marks a defining moment in the history of this House and our country. In fact, the decisions that we make here may have far-reaching consequences in influencing the policies and politics of democratic institutions across the world, for the system of government which has developed on this site by the Thames for more than 700 years has been adopted across the world and has delivered stable democratic government to billions of people. Any sudden leap that we may be tempted to make in reforming this House may therefore have serious and far-reaching consequences for future generations. As Shakespeare said:
	"Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast".
	As with much in modern life, the pace at which this debate has developed has left little time for reflection. For many, the reform of this House has become a bipolar issue. However, it should not just be considered as a choice between "elected" and "appointed". Instead, we should ask ourselves six fundamental and interconnected questions. What is the role of the House of Lords? Who are the people best suited to fulfil this role? From where will they be found? Do appointed Members lack legitimacy? Can elected Members demonstrate the required experience, expertise, quality and impartiality? And, finally, will a largely elected membership of the Lords challenge the primacy of the Commons?
	After seven centuries of parliamentary evolution, this House plays a vital part in our democracy. It does not select Governments; it does not dissolve Governments; and it does not overrule or veto the will of the Commons. It does, however, play a crucial role in scrutinising government and revising and guiding legislation. In doing so, this House serves as an important check and balance on the power of the Government and nothing should challenge or modify this role. This House also brings together people from a diverse field of expertise, as we have heard. They are objective people, eminent people and, most importantly, people who are willing to think independently of party politics. We must be mindful not to dilute this quality in any way.
	So, who is best placed to scrutinise, revise and guide? For many, that question is superseded by the consideration as to whether, first, these people need to be elected or appointed. Unfortunately, I believe that this is where we are guided by the baggage of the past and the need to sound politically correct. This is where, instead of "being right", a lot of people try to "sound right". Both options are not without their merits.
	Perhaps I may quote an example from India. In 1991, India was almost bankrupt when Prime Minister Narasimha Rao appointed Dr Manmohan Singh, an eminent economist, as India's Finance Minister. Dr Manmohan Singh initiated reforms and, within a decade, far from being the "sick man of Asia", India is now one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. What would have happened if India's constitution had expressly forbidden any such appointment? It would have been denied the services of Dr Manmohan Singh, who is now one of the world's most respected leaders. By the way, Dr Singh subsequently stood in a general election—for the lower House in 1999—but, sure enough, he was not enough of a politician and lost it handsomely! As we all know, today Dr Manmohan Singh is Prime Minister of India and sits in India's upper House.
	Would we miss out on the services of such experts here in Britain if we abolished appointments? I have no doubt whatever that we would. The issue that we should address is not whether this should be an appointed House but the system of appointments that needs to be in place to ensure that those selected have been selected on merit and have not prospered out of patronage.
	To be clear, I believe with every fibre that, if we stand for anything, we must stand for democracy. The voice of the people is both the moon and the tides, the push and pull, to our great nation. But we must note also that, just as appointments supposedly give us patronage, elections give us politicians. Neither appointments nor elections are bad in principle; indeed, each plays a vital role. Again, it is a question of checks and balances and of how we can maintain that system.
	Not everyone is a politician; not everyone can stand for, fight and win an election. While I have the greatest respect for those who can and do, we must be mindful of what we could lose in creating two elected Houses, not solely in terms of repetition or redundancy but, potentially, in losing the breadth of experience, expertise and wisdom that is the great strength of this upper House. Again, I have no hesitation in saying that if its membership came through elections alone, this House would have missed out on the services of many eminent Members, both historically and in this House today.
	The leader of the House of Commons has informed us that the popular view is that for the House of Lords to be legitimate, it must be elected or have an elected element. We have also heard a great deal about an appointed House lacking legitimacy. If appointments are clearly and demonstrably without patronage, there will be far less debate over legitimacy. Indeed the calibre of Members and the respect they command are the greatest forms of legitimacy one could ask for. It is the permanence and independent nature of this House that has commanded respect over the years and contributed so much to Britain and to British democracy. The independence of this House is, I believe, truly one of the cornerstones of our democracy.
	Looking ahead, I have no doubt that if we take the route of elections to this House, there will at some point be competition and fractiousness and that the Lords and the Commons will start competing for primacy. It would take us right back to where we were 100 years ago before the passage of the Parliament Act. However progressive these measures may look, I fear that, ironically, they may amount—as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said—to a step backward. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, that if what was on the table was a complete reform and a rewriting of our constitution—of two elected Houses with equal powers—that would be a separate matter. But that is not on the table today.
	As has been said, we have a House that is functioning well—be it in attendance, the quality of the debates or the independent nature of the House. What is needed is further evolution, not revolution. What we are not good at is communicating our strengths to the people. I am often asked by friends and colleagues to explain the role of the House of Lords. I tell them that this House is the guardian of our nation; that it provides scrutiny, oversight, and line-by-line examination of legislation; and that it performs its important function with integrity, independence, objectivity and without regard for point-scoring and private interests.
	My team recently conducted our own straw poll asking people whether they felt that Members of the House of Lords should be elected or appointed. Initially, many favoured an elected Chamber. However, once the role and function of the House was explained to them, most changed their view. I believe that they are not alone. I believe that if we put more effort into communicating what we do here, more people would see the appropriateness of appointed Members.
	This House is very much at the beating heart of democracy in Britain; it has been for centuries, and long may that continue. Let us not shake these great foundations. We always need to remember the rules of home improvement: we can change the layout of the House, we can add or remove walls, but when we meddle with the foundations we risk bringing the whole House down.

Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, first make it more legitimate and then castrate it. That is the recipe recommended to us from Jack Straw's cookery book mark two, but I cannot see it being dished up any time soon—it may be washed up before it is dished up. One of the reasons why the Leader of the Commons, despite his great courtesy, which I salute, led the Commons into this predicted morass—many of us predicted it in terms—is that he has drained the word "legitimacy" of any meaning, just as happened some time ago with the word "democratic" and now with the word "consensus". If we are now heading towards what is called a consensus, my name is Marco Polo.
	Speaking of consensus in the proper sense, the Leader of the Commons has, of course, looked a gift horse in the mouth by not concentrating on addressing two immediate issues: that of making party political appointments more transparent and that of finally saying goodbye to the hereditary principle and practice. He should have stuck to that because, at the moment, we are a million miles away from a consensus on the most fundamental question of all: do people want more checks and balances, fewer or about the same? The majority in the Commons seems to be saying the first but means the second. Hence we have a false prospectus.
	How did the Leader of the Commons, and the Commons more generally, get there? If the case had been examined by Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, the latter would have remarked, "We have here, I am afraid, a strange case of schizophrenia". In any event, when Jack Straw, in an interview in the Guardian, said that we can simply bolt back on the primacy of the Commons, he adduced no reasoning or evidence to suggest that that would be possible if this House were to continue to have the power to amend Bills.
	How would that new statutory primacy rule be translated into practice? Would the Commons simply be able to wave aside any amendments it did not like from the Lords on the Legal Services Bill or whatever? The civilised version of ping pong that is played today would by no means be the name of the game between a much more partisan second Chamber and an equally partisan Commons, where majorities may often differ and issues could be and would be pressed.
	Indeed, on the 100 per cent elected hypothesis, a separate point arises in that it is difficult to see how, when—it is "when" rather than "if"—the governing party in the Commons is not the leading party here, we can carry on with the tradition that the leading Front Bench here is provided by the same party as in the Commons. Why should that be? Perhaps my noble friend the Lord Chancellor can deal with that point among others. If that issue does not arise and it is to make no difference whether more people in this House are Labour or Conservative, what will people want to change by voting one way or the other? It is known that there will be roughly 200 Labour Members, 200 Conservative Members and so on, for the foreseeable future, in the second Chamber.
	The second part of my remarks deals with thinking through the procedures of a reformed appointments system. We can certainly build on criteria such as regional balance, a point well made by my noble friend Lady Quin. It would be perfectly possible to have a number of indirect elections through different hinterlands, including local government, industry, the City, trade unions, ethnic minorities, and so on, as was spelt out in the speech of the greatly respected former Secretary to the Cabinet, the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster.
	I will say a word now about how I think the Labour Party could do that and I would be very grateful if a member of the Conservative Party would indicate whether it could be done in that party in similar terms. The Liberal Democrats have some sort of half-way house, but I do not think that that form would necessarily work well in a party with the rather more complex structure of the Labour Party. Given the 200:200 balance, the White Paper, whose status is very obscure, made some limited proposals. Naturally and correctly, they were largely on the role of the statutory Appointments Commission and did not consider how the Labour Party and the Conservative Party would go about it. That has led some people—in my view inaccurately—to conclude that the main responsibility would lie with the statutory Appointments Commission.
	On the contrary, one needs to pause for a moment to see that the whipped Members of this House—Labour or Conservative Members, as we are talking about political Members—will not be chosen by the statutory Appointments Commission from a larger number. That is because that process would be rejected by the party conferences as it would be tantamount to the statutory Appointments Commission preferring, or being perceived as preferring, more right-wing people or more left-wing people. It would not and could not work like that.
	So how would it be done? I shall sketch it briefly. Each of the parties would need to draw up criteria and write them into their rules. They would have to be in their rules because party conferences and executives could not interfere in detail with selection as there would have to be some degree of confidentiality. The parties would register the criteria with the statutory Appointments Commission and then submit names to it, and the statutory Appointments Commission's override would, as at present, be restricted to grounds of probity. My final point is that a shadow run on this in the next couple of years would be helpful to test out some of the issues that arise. However, there is no reason why this House should not proceed with a Bill to establish a statutory Appointments Commission.
	In conclusion, given the massive majorities we can expect in this place tomorrow for a modernised, reformed appointments system and against selection, the tabloids will want to have a field day in caricaturing them as "Lords puts up two fingers at Commons". I do not believe that the voting here would have been any different if it had taken place in the week preceding the vote in the Commons. As the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, said, it is now for the Government to take a long look and reflect on how opinions in both Houses can be brought together to see where we go from here.

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I feel slightly uncomfortable standing here because, although it may not be news to your Lordships, I am a hereditary Peer and, I remind your Lordships, one of the few elected Members of your Lordships' House. I know that being a hereditary Peer is one of the lowest forms of political life, but there seems to be a common cause—almost a bizarre ganging-up—among those who want to reform your Lordships' House in the quasi-inevitability that the remainder of the hereditary Peers will have to go. They seem to want to see hereditary Peers vaporised, as it were. I suppose I should declare an interest as I do not particularly agree with that, and I hope that it will not happen. It is really very unwelcoming and rather anti-social, too. I think that people who try that should be issued with anti-social behaviour orders to make them a little more welcoming.
	I have always been of the view that, if there is to be change—and I see no reason for it as the House works so well—the House should be 100 per cent appointed. The House of Commons is where political and parliamentary power rests, and it should not be compromised by another elected Chamber, whatever the proportion of elected Members. Power is finite. If there is to be an elected second Chamber, it will, of course, be more powerful than the present one, and that additional power can come only as a transfer of power away from another place.
	One of the great virtues of your Lordships' House as it is at present is the remarkable blend of history, law, church and achievement, and I sometimes wonder whether all this clamour for change is because the Government have so tarnished the standing of the House of Lords with their cash-for-peerages row that they are trying to deflect attention away from that by saying, "Let's reform the House of Lords again". It is rather like the politician who scribbled in the margin of his notes, "Weak point. Shout.".
	One frequently hears people say, "Thank God for the House of Lords". One very seldom hears people say, "Thank God for the House of Commons". The present Members of another place may say that they wish for a second elected Chamber, but I can tell them that their successors will hate it. The two Houses will frequently be in opposition to each other. The new upper House will say, "We have just as much right to see that our views prevail as has the House of Commons. We have been elected, too". There will be constant constitutional clashes. Members of Parliament will intensely dislike having another person prancing around their patch vying for votes. Members of the House of Lords will have to be paid, the elected ones and the appointed ones, too. As the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, said, they will want another Portcullis House, and where will that go? The power of the House of Lords will be increased at the expense of another place and the cost will be prodigious.
	The two Houses have different but complementary roles. Many Members of your Lordships' House who have been in another place have said, like my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon, that when they were there they did not realise what your Lordships did and now that they are here, they realise and are amazed. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe once made a telling speech—he has made many telling speeches but, for the purposes of this debate, he made one that I well remember. He was talking of the value of your Lordships' House as it is at present and of the value of its remarkable and varied composition. He gave as an example the Human Reproduction and Cloning Bill 2001, which was very technical and sensitive. There were 20 speakers in the debate and they included the head, or former head, of two Cambridge colleges; two former presidents of the Royal College of Physicians; two general practitioners; two consultants specifically involved in the field; the president of Mencap; the vice president of Life; a former chairman of the Bar Council; a former chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission; two bishops; and the Minister who was responsible for the Bill. That was a formidable list of experts. As my noble and learned friend said, there is no legislature in the world that would begin to command that range of expertise on a topic of that nature. Ministers and Members of another place are free to accept or reject the advice given by experts of that kind, but its availability is invaluable, and it cannot be matched in any other way. Does anyone think that those people would ever want to stand for election and be pestered by constituents about their council tax or their local hospital? Of course, they would not. They make just as great a contribution to democracy—the will of the people—as the person who is on the party list and has been drafted in to the second Chamber. Your Lordships are often more in tune with the sentiments of the public than are Members of another place.
	So, what do the Government want to do? They want to throw it all away and replace it with a half-appointed, half-elected Chamber. However, if an all-appointed House is illegitimate—that awful word—then a half-elected House will presumably be only half-legitimate, so that does not get us very far. Then what happens? According to the White Paper, once elected for 15 years, the Members of the second Chamber can do and say what they like and they can do the opposite of what they campaigned for. Indeed, they do not have to do anything at all and can just collect the salary and go away, knowing full well that they do not have to stand for re-election. There is no redress. They will be elected, but they will be unaccountable. As one third of them will be elected every five years, the full complement of elected people will not be in the Chamber until 2020, but that puts 850 people in the House. So the size of the House has to be reduced to 540. How can that be done? It can be done either by letting the grim reaper do his stuff and waiting for your Lordships to die—which, although inevitable, may not be immediate—or by paying your Lordships off. That would go down a bundle with the electorate. How do you pay people not to do something for which they were never paid in the first place? How much will they be paid: £10,000, £20,000 or £50,000? For those who have given, or who have lent, £2 million to party funds, that may not seem to be overtly attractive. If cash for peerages has created a row, it will be nothing compared to the row which will be created by cash for giving up peerages. Making a person a Peer and then paying him to stop being a Peer is hardly a decorous or constitutional way in which to behave.
	When the House of Lords Bill, which removed hereditary Peers, was going through your Lordships' House, I gently advised life Peers to take the smiles off their faces because it would be their turn next and, sure as eggs are eggs, so it is. But the really astonishing thing about all this is that the Government are proposing a new Chamber which will not be fully in existence until all the present Members of your Lordships' House and half the present electorate are dead. How can we possibly impose, not on ourselves, but on our successors, such an obtuse concept?
	What have the Government actually done under the careful direction of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor? They have removed the majority of the hereditary Peers, thrown out the Law Lords and disposed of the Lord Chancellor. Now they want to remove the remainder of the hereditary Peers and reduce the number of Bishops, and they will have to remove some of the life Peers—and all of them if the House is to be 100 per cent elected. The Government really have got a tiger by the tail over this, which is pulling them, the constitution and everyone else all over the place; the direction and the consequences of which are unknown and unfathomable.
	After so many changes, why cannot we just leave your Lordships' House alone for a while? Let it settle down. If, in five or 10 years' time alterations are thought desirable, let fresh minds and fresh thoughts, bereft of the cascade of bruising which the House has been obliged to suffer, be brought to bear.
	I commend to your Lordships the words of one person who was a Member of your Lordships' House, but who no longer is. He is not a hereditary Peer your Lordships will be glad to know, but he was on the Episcopal Benches as the Lord Bishop of Norwich, the right reverend Prelate Peter Nott. He once gave a very clear description of the important differences between what is old-fashioned, what is traditional, and what is extinct. The right reverend Prelate said:
	"Old-fashioned is flared trousers, Morris Minors, the quickstep, Bing Crosby, stone hot-water bottles and"—
	in his profession as Bishop—
	"gaiters. Tradition is Trooping the Colour, the State Opening of Parliament, getting married in church and the 10 Commandments. Extinct is the dodo, brontosaurus and gramophone records which break when you drop them".
	When the differences between those three are not recognised, said the right reverend Prelate, there can be confusion. What is extinct has gone beyond recall. Fashion changes often and is essentially ephemeral. Tradition is more complex, for, unlike fashion, it contains elements that have shaped our present, and influenced the way we think and act. Traditions can be changed, rather like fashions, or discarded, as if extinct. But those who have the power to change traditions should think very hard indeed about what they are doing; because some traditions, like sacraments, often have a deeper significance, the loss of which would harm our life as a community or as people. So said the former Bishop of Norwich.
	The Government are on dangerous ground in what they are doing. Indeed, they do not know what they are doing, nor do any of us, and I just hope that they, and, indeed, another place, will, if nothing else, reflect on the right reverend Prelate's words.

Lord Harries of Pentregarth: My Lords, I had the privilege of being a member of the royal commission a few years ago and I begin by paying tribute to its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, because many of the key ideas in that report have survived to today, gathering momentum on the way. To mention just three, there is the separation of membership of a reformed House from an automatic link with a peerage; long fixed terms of office for both elected and appointed Members; and a long period of gradual change to a new order. Those and other recommendations are now widely accepted.
	Paragraph 7.97 of the current White Paper proposes that all members should sit for 15 years and that,
	"there would be no prospect of re-election or re-appointment".
	I believe that that is wrong and that the Wakeham alternative on the issue is better: that after 15 years, both elected and appointed Members could, under exceptional circumstances, be appointed by the statutory Appointments Commission for a further term of office of up to 15 years. Otherwise, we shall have the very unhappy situation of someone being elected at, say, 30, serving the House with distinction and then at the age of 50 no longer being able to contribute much valued wisdom and experience.
	The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, advised us at the beginning of the debate yesterday that we should not repeat arguments advanced by other noble Lords. Therefore, on the question of Bishops, I simply say that I fully support what was said by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford. I urge something that we took some trouble over on the royal commission: that the statutory Appointments Commission, when it is appointed, takes very seriously the question of appointing distinguished people who can be seen in some way to be representative of Christian denominations other than the Anglican church and of other faith communities. I know that the religious dimension is not welcomed by all your Lordships, but the fact is that religion is now a major player on the public stage of both this country and the world as a whole and it is vital that voices who want to be heard are connected with this House in some way.
	In the other place, I listened with particular attention to the powerful speech of Mr Douglas Hogg, in which he set out the options with clarity and a hard reality to which not all in that House have faced up: the hard reality that the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, spelt out this morning with great force in her powerful speech. The Member in another place said that he wanted a stronger second Chamber better to hold the Executive to account, a job he feels that the Commons does not do very well at the moment. To achieve that, he said that he would, with a very great sense of loss, go for a totally elected House as the only way to obtain the necessary legitimacy and power to do that. I do not want a stronger House. I believe that our present powers of revision and delay are about right.
	I would also like to tackle the argument about legitimacy that is often put forward: that the sole way that that can be achieved is by election. There are many different kinds of legitimacy and authority, if you like. There is the authority of proven expertise, for example, represented among both the political and non-political appointments. A Select Committee has legitimacy, but it is appointed, not elected. I do not accept that if we have a significant appointed element in this House, it is thereby less legitimate, especially when you focus on what we are actually asking the House to do, which is to work hard on the detail of legislation, trying to avoid pitfalls and to improve it along the way.
	Personally, I support a small elected element, not because I believe that it will add to the legitimacy of the House but, first, because I would like the regions to be better represented here. Secondly, we should add another pathway through which a person could come to this House, thereby giving a wider, different group of people an opportunity to become a Member.
	I do not believe that the political element in this House should come solely through election. One reason why the House works well now is that a large number of your Lordships have served either in the other place or in local government. What about someone who wants to retire from the Commons, either a long-serving Back-Bencher or an ex-Minister, whose experience would be valuable to this House? People have said to me, "Oh, they could stand for election and just go on a party list". Is that really what we want those lists for, if we are having lists? That way, we would not bring in new people with a different background. We should welcome political appointments without apology and they should be transparent, as well as being scrutinised by the statutory Appointments Commission.
	The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, in his powerful speech yesterday, was rather dismissive of a hybrid House, saying that the House had to be either totally elected or totally appointed. That theme has been pursued by a number of your Lordships. But in recent decades, we have had a hybrid House and it has worked well. There is no reason why a hybrid House of elected and appointed Members should not work equally well, but much depends on the percentage of each element. If we were 80 per cent elected and 20 per cent appointed, there would be a danger that the appointed element would feel somehow surplus or supernumerary—aside from the main action.
	However, the other way round, with 20 per cent elected and 80 per cent appointed, there would not be the reverse danger, for the elected element would rightly have the confidence of their election. They would add to the House without being able to dominate it. My preferred option, therefore, is for a 20 per cent or 40 per cent elected element, with 20 per cent non-political appointments and the rest appointed by the political parties, scrutinised by the Appointments Commission not just for probity but for the balance of the House, especially gender and ethnic background.
	Such a House would preserve the best of what we have now while rightly opening itself up to new perspectives and a wider range of members. It would be legitimate and representative, fit for its proper purpose of improving legislation while leaving the supremacy of the Commons unquestioned.

Lord Low of Dalston: My Lords, the assistance that airports and airlines are willing to provide is very welcome and the EU regulation is doubly welcome in that it will have a standardising effect on what airlines and airports are willing to do. Does the Minister recognise, however, that one problem at the moment is that inappropriate assistance may be offered? For example, blind and partially sighted people may be offered a wheelchair when that is not what they need; it would be much more appropriate, if it is a long distance to the gate, to have a buggy to take them there or even just sighted guiding assistance. Through the consultation process and in any guidance issued as a result, on the implementation of the EU regulation, will the Government make it clear that disabled people should be asked about what kind of assistance they would find most valuable?

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, it is clear from the questions that we have all been heavily and well briefed by the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. I shall stick to what it has been asking so that we clear its sheet, as it were.
	Will the Government's assurances given during the passage of the Civil Aviation Act 2006—that airlines' practice of charging for the checks required to comply with PETS will be outlawed in 2008 when the EU regulations are fully implemented—will be honoured? What practical changes will be necessary for that to happen?

Lord Triesman: My Lords, I would be surprised if it were high on the agenda of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Zimbabwe withdrew from the Commonwealth, arguably just moments before it was removed from it. I know of no intention to re-admit it. It is completely out of line with, paradoxically, the Harare principles for good governance.
	I have also heard that Mugabe anticipates carrying on in power well beyond 2008. I do not know whether that will happen, because his economy has more or less imploded. The World Bank is anticipating a rate of inflation that may be approximately 5,000 per cent by the end of the year. These are circumstances from which I believe no economy in peacetime, and probably in wartime, has recovered.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, in the circumstances described by the Minister of Zimbabwe imploding, does he think that the recommendation made by the ICG—that the European Union should engage with SADAC in formulating and implementing a strategy for a peaceful transition to post-Mugabe democratic rule—now stands a better and more realistic chance of success? If these discussions do take place between the EU and SADAC, will the Minister ensure that one of the matters to be taken up is the humanitarian situation of the victims of Mugabe's tyranny and in particular those who have been severely injured in the recent attacks on peaceful demonstrators?

Lord Triesman: My Lords, I believe that when these matters are resolved the suffering of people in recent days—and over a considerable period—must feature in those discussions. SADAC has a responsibility as the regional part of the African Union and plainly ought to play more of a role. In answering the question I am cautious, not because I disagree with the sentiment that lies behind it, but because I have been frustrated on too many occasions by witnessing the fact that leaders in SADAC have not been prepared to play that role. We should urge them to do so.

Lord Goodlad: My Lords, when, for three separate periods over a number of years, I was part of the usual channels in another place, it was my duty to visit your Lordships' House frequently, which I greatly enjoyed. I prided myself on understanding the ways of your Lordships' House, its traditions and its foibles. Little did I realise until I came here, less than two years ago, the depth of my ignorance and how imperfectly I understood the elegant subtleties of your Lordships' House.
	My noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon observed earlier how little Members of the other place understand your Lordships' House. He is right. Why should they? Their priorities lie entirely elsewhere. In a sense, we are like Bertie Wooster's aunts: aunt baying to aunt,
	"like mastodons ... across the primeval swamp".
	Perhaps like the historian, FW Maitland, who was accused of seeing medieval England through a mist of moots and witans, my former colleagues in the other place looking along the Corridor see through a prism of coronets and ermine, with a wholesome contempt for the great and the good and the privileged—not parliamentary privilege, of course, which is sacrosanct in the other place. Noble Lords here are exasperated by the wilful, even disrespectful, reluctance of the other place to acknowledge our wisdom, experience, expertise, independence, diversity and modesty.
	Some of my former colleagues are, even today, ageist, which is certainly not politically correct and, in some circumstances, is illegal. I suppose that it was ever thus. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, in her remarkable speech, suggested an all-party committee of both Houses to take matters forward. I do not normally favour setting up ever more committees to take decisions, but I believe that on this occasion it is an excellent suggestion. Indeed, the more such committees there are, the better. The Government are seeking consensus and I hope that one may emerge. These things are always relative.
	The case against an elected or predominantly elected House has been analysed in the White Paper and powerfully argued, especially by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, my noble and learned friend Lord Howe, my noble friend Lord Lawson, and others, so I shall not repeat their arguments. Suffice it to say that no system of election could be devised that would deliver the gender, racial, religious and other aspects of diversity that we have in your Lordships' House—far more so than is or ever could be the case in the other place. That can be achieved only by the Appointments Commission.
	The Australian Constitution of 1901 stipulated that each state should have the same number of senators, irrespective of population. The intention was that senators would represent the interests of states in a body where the most populous states could not dominate the less populous. In practice, the Senate was quickly taken over by the principal party machines—a condition that has prevailed to this day. A wholly, or 80 per cent elected, second Chamber here would undergo the same experience. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, the Conservatives would have had the upper hand in elections. From the mid-1990s until recently, it would have been the Labour Party. The assumption that an election could not deliver a single-party majority in the Lords is clearly false. Elections are unpredictable. My right honourable and learned friend—he is a great friend—Ken Clarke in another place spoke of an idealised Chamber in which Members would be immune from the Whips. Pigs might fly, but I do not think that they will.
	No doubt the world would not come to an end if there was a single-party majority in the second Chamber but, as the White Paper recognises, the conventions of this place whereby your Lordships' existing powers are not used to bring the Government to a halt and cause gridlock would need to be enshrined in statute—in effect, a written constitution, on which we are far from agreeing. If a second Chamber were controlled by the same party as the other place, we would have produced an elective dictatorship. If it were controlled by the Opposition, there would be a high risk of gridlock. Neither would be the end of the world, but they would hardly be an improvement on what we have now. Nor is it what people want.
	In recent years, the House of Commons has ceded substantial power to Brussels, Strasbourg, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Students of Tudor and Stuart history of my generation were advised to read Wallace Notestein's learned tract, The Winning of the Initiative by the House of Commons. Future students may read a tract about the present era entitled, "The Losing of the Initiative by the House of Commons". Power is indeed finite, as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said. It is a zero-sum game. Some see creating an elected second Chamber as a way of checking the overweening power of the Executive, but surely if primacy means anything, that is the job of the other place, not of a revising and deliberative Chamber. The noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, deplored, as I do, the new procedure of programming all legislation in the other place—what we used to call the guillotine. However, MPs do not have to vote for these measures. Perhaps tomorrow night's rebellion will give government Back-Benchers the appetite for a little more independence. The solution to an overmighty Executive lies in the other place. That is what primacy is about.
	Like other former Members of the other place, I never had any correspondence about House of Lords reform. Jack Straw referred in the other place to,
	"the pent-up feeling for devolution".—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/07; col. 1399.].
	He was talking about the situation prior to the devolution legislation. There is no such pent-up demand for an elected House of Lords today; in fact, quite the reverse. Consensus lies in creating a statutory Appointments Commission, charged with appointing Peers from all walks of life, all regions—Owen Paterson in the other place pointed out the preponderance of the south-east—all faiths, all ethnic minorities and all age groups, and ending the system of by-elections for hereditary Peers. We have been asked to consider a massive constitutional change, about which few details, such as functions and methods of election and so on, are apparent, as the Government concede. The noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, said that we are being asked to sign a blank cheque. All the White Paper offers us for our blank cheque is a pig in a poke.
	Since 1999, our Chamber has been characterised by independence and diversity, where all parties are represented but none has a majority, and all agree that it is performing well—as well, some say, as it ever has in history. We should let your Lordships' House continue to evolve, with a statutory Appointments Commission, as envisaged in the White Paper and as described by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, and others, and we should revisit the matter in years to come if the present and envisaged arrangements, which are very new, seem unsatisfactory. There is no hurry.

Lord Low of Dalston: My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, last night, I hope that the observations of a relative newcomer to the House will not seem out of place and that they may add value. I draw encouragement from the statement of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that no one should feel inhibited about expressing their views. I would be content for mine to be seen as the contribution of a rising star amid this galaxy of heavyweights. I can hope only that my star will not be snuffed out too precipitately as a result of the discussions on which we are embarked.
	I associate myself with the sentiments expressed by the noble Lord, Lord James of Blackheath, in his maiden speech shortly after my own on 21 November 2006. He said that it had come as a revelation to him to witness at first hand,
	"the wealth of experience, the depth of knowledge and the fierce independence at work in this Chamber, which are almost certainly beyond the recognition and appreciation of the wider British public".
	A leitmotif running through this debate has been the extent to which the work and the working of your Lordships' House are neither understood nor appreciated. The noble Lord, Lord James, went on to say:
	"It would be a tragedy if the public discovered what they had had only by losing it".—[Official Report, 21/11/06; col. 270.]
	I speak only as I find and I hope that I will not be considered to be too self-serving and complacent in making these observations. As will appear, I am not wholly uncritical of the working of the House and believe that changes could usefully be made.
	I had always entertained a measure of scepticism about the cliché that the level of debate was superior in your Lordships' House to that in another place. Perhaps that scepticism would have been justified in the dog-days of the House identified by the White Paper when only a fraction of your Lordships' predecessors attended on a regular basis. But since I arrived, I have been awed by the level of expertise, the analytical prowess and the forensic command evident in your Lordships' House, which is so devoid of the kind of political knockabout with which we are so familiar in another place. I do not believe that that can be attributed solely to my accession to the House. More than once I have attended a debate with the thought that I might make an intervention, only to abandon the idea rapidly on recognising that I was in the presence of people who knew 10,000 times more about the subject than I did.
	Some debates have been among the best seminars that I have ever attended. I say "seminars" because I have sometimes wondered what difference they made. It has occurred to me that there could be merit in our recording our view in a resolution that is slightly less bland than is customary in your Lordships' House, which need not be confrontational. The Government may wish tomorrow that we had recorded our view with slightly greater emphasis at the end of our recent debate on the renewal of the Trident missile system.
	However, on the matter in hand, there is a problem of legitimacy. To the bien pensants who consider themselves to be of a generally progressive disposition, there is something faintly disreputable about the House of Lords. One detected that in the reaction to one's own appointment in certain quarters: "Not really to be condoned, but perhaps, since it's you". This stems from the association with aristocracy and the hereditary principle, which is surely anachronistic with the renaissance of your Lordships' House following the 1999 Act, since when, by common consent, it has worked with unparalleled effectiveness. It is also specious, as many speakers have shown, to say that legitimacy comes only from election. The most significant thing to come out of the debate over these two days is the destruction of the argument for election as the only basis of legitimacy, along with illustrations of the lack of knowledge of this place and the absence of demand for reform, as attested by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford and other speakers.
	That is not to say that there should be no change. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, and others have suggested some basic changes, but not the kind that will be offered in Motions 2 to 7 tomorrow. I believe that your Lordships' House is in many ways more democratic than the other place. In the absence of the stranglehold of party discipline, the organs of civil society have much more genuine access to the legislative process. The problem of legitimacy is much more one of perception than reality. The remedy is much more one of education—rather than election—about how the House is composed and how it works. It is said that public opinion wants an elected House, but I am not aware that any attempt has ever been made to engender a proper understanding of these things. However, severance of the link with the peerage probably would make a difference to how things are perceived.
	I am not so much in favour of appointment as against elections, at least of the kind proposed—in geographical constituencies from party lists, however open. Indeed, I would not feel able to vote for an elected element if it was to be elected on such a basis. The idea that this will confer legitimacy is laughable when one considers the regard in which the other place is held. Such elections will simply produce a cardboard replica of the other place, a House full of party hacks good only for political knockabout and devoid of the expertise and analytical mode of operation that make this House so fit for purpose as a revising Chamber.
	A number of other arguments against election need to be considered. It is said that election will alter the balance of power between the Houses. Though much is made of this, I do not think that it is as strong an argument as is commonly supposed. Election of the upper House may give rise to tension and have a destabilising effect, but it cannot actually alter the balance of power except in so far as the other place allows. On the other hand, I am certain that election of Members to this House on the basis of geographical constituencies will bring them into conflict with the representative role of Members of the other place. We have heard about this from noble Lords who are familiar with the Scottish situation. Finally, there is what I might call the "fourth XI" problem, to which the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, drew our attention in his intervention in the debate on the Queen's Speech and to which other noble Lords have alluded. That goes to the very heart of the issue of quality and fitness for purpose.
	However, I am anxious to be of help in moving towards a consensus, and I think that I can be. If elections were to be based on constituencies reflecting the different sectors of civil society—the arts, sport, medicine, the law, trades unions, education, the voluntary sector, the women's movement, disability, black and ethnic minority communities, the different faiths and so forth—it would be possible to combine the requirement for expertise with that of election. Such systems are usually dismissed on the grounds of complexity and impracticability, but there are precedents in other countries, and as I see it they offer the only basis for consensus between those who want a method of recruitment to the second Chamber that maximises expertise and those who want a House whose composition is determined by election.
	It therefore behoves us, I believe, to try a little harder. I understand the difficulties. Other noble Lords, led by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, have their own lists of constituencies, but if the Government were to come up with a scheme and consult on it, and all our different ideas were to be pooled, I cannot believe that it would be beyond the wit of man to arrive at a scheme that commanded general acceptance. I would be happy to submit my ideas, and no doubt other noble Lords will have theirs. If the proposals have flaws, as no doubt they will, I hope that that will be a stimulus to improve them rather than a reason to reject them out of hand.

Lord Gordon of Strathblane: My Lords, as I imagine did many noble Lords last Wednesday evening, I sensed the boot of history targeting my posterior. The depression was slightly lifted, however, when I analysed the contributions to the debate in the Commons, because it was quite clear that MPs were voting not so much for a specific proposal as uniting behind a slogan of "election", or rather, "elections good, appointment bad", was more the mood of the House. I was further encouraged when I analysed the votes, because although I was disappointed that the vote for appointment was down, it was significant to note that in the Conservative Party the majority against had narrowed from 28 to 23, while in the Labour Party the majority had grown from 6 against an all-appointed House to 84. I have direct anecdotal evidence that a lot of Labour MPs were very concerned that Labour should not seen as the only party in favour of appointment, bearing in mind that the two other major parties have in their manifesto a House of Lords that is 80 per cent or 100 per cent elected.
	While mindful of the admonition of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York at close of play last night that we should not keep talking about cash for honours, the publicity surrounding events over the past year is, to put it mildly, not conducive to a dispassionate examination of the merits of an appointments system. But let us be quite clear: the country could not survive without appointments. The whole infrastructure of our civil society depends on people from whichever party making appointments and, by and large, people accepting them. Many bodies are being set up to monitor this and make sure that it is done fairly. We have very nearly got it right. To allude for the last time to events that allegedly took place, it is clear that the Appointments Commission blocked something happening. The commission was doing its job and I am quite content for it to be more transparent still. That is a true reform of the House of Lords. To abolish it and replace it with a second Chamber with no name which will be wholly elected is not reform; it is abolition. It is a major constitutional step. It is like someone going to the doctor with a sore throat or a head cold and being prescribed decapitation.
	I was further encouraged when I looked at those who voted for 80 per cent election. Surprisingly, that option did not have a majority among Labour MPs—I concede that the majority against was narrow at five votes, but it was still a majority—or in the Conservative Party, despite the fact that it was official Conservative policy. Assuming, with the greatest respect to the Liberal Democrats, that one of those two parties will form the next Government, they might have some difficulty convincing their members that it would be a good idea to pursue an 80 per cent or 100 per cent elected House.
	I have news for my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor: I wish to offer him a consensus—not unanimity, but consensus. I am mindful of the admonition of the Leader of the House in the other place, Jack Straw, who said we should not let the best be the enemy of the good. What I propose is exactly what other people here have referred to, including the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and what Ben Chapman, the MP for Wirral South, referred to in the House of Commons. We should abolish the hereditary by-elections or remove the hereditaries, baptising them immediately as life Peers on their own merit, with the involvement of a transparent statutory Appointments Commission. In addition to what the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, said, it would probably be sensible to have the same procedure as the House of Commons for removal for misdemeanour. I would also be happy with a proposal that allowed people to retire or be deemed to have retired if they were not here for more than, say, five days a year. That would be a package; it may not be revolutionary to some in the House of Commons, but it would represent a House of Lords reform.
	Here I must take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. This would be a legitimate second-stage reform, as envisaged by the previous Lord Chancellor, my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine, when he said that the 92 existing hereditaries would remain until the second stage. It would surely be perverse for this House, of all Houses, which has consistently voted by a majority of three to one in favour of a completely appointed House, to say that an all-appointed House is not a legitimate second-stage reform. It is subconsciously saying that we will not really be reformed until we are all elected, which is not what this House thinks.
	If we have elections, we will undoubtedly affect the primacy of the House of Commons, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said yesterday. It is all very well for Jack Straw to say that, if necessary, its primacy will be put in statute. At the end of the day, the people decide. If, after all this trumpeting about a huge reform, which started with the Reform Act 1832 and the end of privilege and continued through to the end of fox hunting, we suddenly produce a closed, partially closed or partially open list system, where one elects somebody for 15 years and cannot get rid of them, the public will say, "No, that is not what we thought you meant by 'elected' when you asked us whether we would like an elected House of Lords". I am reminded of the tag from Horace, which I will translate:
	"The mountains are in labour and produce a ridiculous mouse".
	That is really what the proposal amounts to. The noble Lord, Lord Livsey of Talgarth, observed that an elected House would be more accountable, but, by definition, it will be no different from an appointed House. If you are elected for 15 years and cannot be deselected, you are totally unaccountable, but we have lost the advantages that appointment gives us. The advantages are set out quite clearly, so I need not take up the time of the House with them. We need only to read pages 30 and 31 of the White Paper. Paragraph 7.2 states that the simplest way to ensure that the principles of composition that we are all looking for are met is appointment. Paragraph 7.3 states that appointment would help ensure that we reflect the diverse population of the United Kingdom. The only drawback of appointment, in the words of the White Paper, is its alleged illegitimacy. I think that that point has been dealt with sufficiently. I am not one of those who think that "unelected" is a term of abuse. I do not want to live in a society where, for example, judges are elected and presumably vying with each other for the approval of the Sun and the Daily Mail through the severity of their sentencing policy.
	I think that the public are expecting something different. They do not necessarily understand how the House of Lords works simply because it does not get the publicity that the House of Commons does—in many ways, quite rightly. However, it is surely perverse, at a time when we have just reached what has been spoken of as a historic agreement—the Cunningham report—on how both Houses should work, suddenly to put that in danger, as the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, referring to paragraph 61 of the report, pointed out yesterday, by altering the possibility of the primacy of the Commons being challenged.
	I have been in this House for just under 10 years but, previously, I used to present a political programme on television for about eight years which looked at the work of the House of Commons, so I have a little knowledge of the other place as well. It strikes me that it is daft to talk about complementarity of Chambers if they never talk to each other. We have a situation where one end is in total, blissful ignorance of what the other does, and that applies, to be fair, in both directions—we are as bad as the House of Commons. Surely that is the target that we must address. We must get Parliament as a whole working together, with the respective skills of the Lords and the Commons complementing each other and producing better government than we have at the moment.

Lord Saatchi: My Lords, my purpose today is to seek an undertaking from the Government that, if any Bill is sent up to your Lordships' House to create a wholly elected Chamber, such a Bill will contain a specific provision to repeal the Parliament Act 1911. Without such an undertaking, your Lordships' House should not concur with the wish of another place for a wholly elected House.
	It can be implied, and I would do so, that the repeal of the Parliament Act 1911 took place with the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999, which removed the hereditary Peers from your Lordships' House.
	I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Kingsland for his legal erudition on this matter. I draw your Lordships' attention to section 80 of Bennion's Statutory Interpretation, which describes the doctrine of implied repeal:
	"Where a later enactment does not expressly amend (whether textually or indirectly) an earlier enactment which it has power to override, but the provisions of the later enactment are inconsistent with those of the earlier, the later by implication amends the earlier so far as is necessary to remove the inconsistency between them".
	In his commentary on the code, Bennion states that:
	"If a later Act cannot stand with an earlier, Parliament (though it has not said so) is taken to intend an amendment of the earlier. This is a logical necessity, since two inconsistent texts cannot both be valid without contravening the principle of contradiction. If the entirety of the earlier Act is inconsistent, the effect amounts to a repeal of it".
	The inconsistency between the Parliament Act 1911 and the House of Lords Act 1999 is evident from examination of the recitals to the 1911 Act, which clearly describe the intention of the Parliament Act. It was, as we all know, to restrict,
	"the existing powers of the House of Lords".
	Shall we ask ourselves what the motive was behind that intent? The record seems to show that the motivation and raison d'être of the Parliament Act 1911 arose from the then hereditary nature of your Lordships' House. Commending the Parliament Bill to the House of Commons on its Second Reading on 2 March 1911, the Liberal Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, said:
	"Take the hereditary principle. What can we get out of it? Hon. Gentlemen opposite have got a great deal out of it . . . a working instrument to frustrate and nullify the functions of this House when there is a Liberal Government in power . . . That is what the right hon. Gentleman"—
	he was referring to Mr Balfour, the leader of the Conservative Opposition—"gets out of it".
	Then the Prime Minister spelled out the motive for the Parliament Bill. Speaking of the hereditary principle, he said:
	"Let it not be our master. So say we. It is because it has been our master . . . because it enslaves and fetters the free action of this House, that we have put these proposals before the House and we mean to carry them into law".—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/11; col. 584.]
	Winston Churchill, campaigning for the Parliament Bill around the country, asked:
	"Why should their children govern our children? Why should the sons and the grandsons and the great grandsons have legislative functions?".
	He said he hoped that the Bill would be,
	"fatal to the hereditary House of Lords".
	The recitals to the Parliament Act 1911 make it clear that the offence complained of—in other words, insufficient respect from your Lordships' House for the elected House—was an offence committed by an hereditary House of Lords. That offence, against what we now in common parlance call the primacy of the House of Commons—the phrase has been used many times in this debate—was to be remedied, as we know, by strict time limits on our delaying power, a blanket disqualification of your Lordships' House in public finance, and the vouchsafing of all fiscal authority to another place, so that with regard to all money Bills we could look but not touch. In effect, the Parliament Act 1911 ultimately gave power to another place to override decisions of your Lordships.
	We know that the House of Lords Act 1999 made this House not hereditary. According to the then Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, it made it "more democratic, more legitimate". Thus it can be argued that according to the doctrine of implied repeal, that made the Parliament Act 1911 obsolete. So either the 1911 Act has already been repealed by virtue of its inconsistency with the later Act of 1999, or else it should be repeated in any future Act that puts our House on to an elected basis.
	The 1911 Act sought a House of Lords constructed on a "popular, not hereditary basis". We are now not hereditary. It is of course arguable whether we are popular; I would say that we are, but it is debatable. It is certain, however, that the creation of a new elected House, being both popular and not hereditary, will render the 1911 Act redundant. That is why I urge every noble Lord considering voting for an elected House tomorrow to insist before they vote on an undertaking from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that any Act which comes before us to create an elected House will contain a specific provision to repeal that most iconic of all Acts of Parliament, the Parliament Act 1911.

Lord Lipsey: My Lords, some noble Lords may think that I am lowering the tone of this wonderful debate if I confine my remarks, as I shall, to my special subject: the cost of reform. That is not the sole reason why I oppose election to this House, but it does seem to be relevant that what we are considering is not merely a folly but an extremely expensive folly.
	Some noble Lords may believe that democracy—if I may stretch that word to apply to the White Paper proposal—is a pearl beyond price and that I am just one of those damned economists who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is always difficult to argue with absolutists but I shall make just one point to them. There is one reason and one reason only why electing the Lords is so fashionable at the moment, and that is the so-called cash-for-honours affair. I rather agree with the remarks of the right reverend Primate the Archbishop of York last night, that we should be chary of going into that subject. However, I do not think that I will trespass against that warning if I say that, last year, the three main political parties together spent £98 million. That is rather less than my estimate of the annual cost of 100 per cent election to your Lordships' House. In other words, we could, if we wanted to solve that problem, simply give the money to the parties. Then we would not then have to worry about changing this admirable House.
	Other noble Lords, however, will not take the absolutist view but the more usual view. I see the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, sitting there; as a past Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, he will certainly agree with this. With most goods in public life, it is not a question of being able to pay for them whatever they cost; but if you choose to have one thing, you cannot have another thing. The Government face a budget constraint. So, to put it quite simply, if reforming this House is going to cost a lot of money, that is going to mean fewer teachers, nurses, doctors, soldiers and so on. That seems a common-sense view. It does matter what this costs.
	When I did my estimates, I did not do it to prove anything particular but to fill a gap in the White Paper. The White Paper provides no costings for its proposals, on the grounds that
	"It is difficult to assess the overall cost of any reform to the House of Lords until the final shape of reform is known".
	That is true—it is obviously true as far as it goes. But my suspicious mind could not help thinking that it was a jolly convenient truth for the Government since the cost would rather mitigate against their arguments. It was possible, after sitting down for a while, to make some reasonable estimates. I have produced a costing on the basis of such assumptions and estimates.
	The cost of each election to this House is £30 million. If you want the source for that, it is the White Paper. Each elected Member of this House eventually replaces an appointed Member, and I suggest that each elected Member will cost about two-thirds of what a Member of the House of Commons costs, to reflect their lesser constituency duties. I suggest a pension of £20,000 a year is paid to life Peers who agree to retire, to compensate them in part for the pensions they have not been able to provide for themselves since Members of this House are not paid. That is floated in the White Paper. Extra accommodation is made available in my estimates at a rather conservative rate of one extra workstation for each elected Peer, so they can have someone who keeps in touch with their constituents.
	Those, I hasten to add, are conservative estimates—they do not, for example, provide for any pay for appointed Peers during the transitional period when the elected Members are going to be paid—but they nevertheless produce monstrous results. Over the 15-year transitional period to an elected House, the extra costs will exceed £1 billion for a 50 per cent elected House, and £2 billion for a 100 per cent elected House. Two billion pounds represents a pile of £10 notes a mile and a half high.
	Having produced these costings, I had rather hoped that the Government would respond by entering into a proper debate. I was therefore—how shall I put this?—a trifle disappointed at the reaction of Mr Straw when my costings were raised by Mr David Clelland in another place. Mr Straw, the Leader of the House, said:
	"Lord Lipsey's estimate is absolute utter balderdash and nonsense? It cannot be the case that a partly elected other place would cost £1 billion when the total cost of this place ... is £300 million".—[Official Report, Commons, 7/3/07; col. 1554.]
	Absolute utter balderdash and nonsense—moi?
	Mr Straw's main error was in the costing of the House of Commons. How would he know—he's only the Leader of the place. He said that the figure was £300 million; in fact, for the latest year it is £468.8 million. For that, see the Written Answer from the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, to a Written Question from the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, on 28 June 2006 at cols. WA 168-70. But that is only the minor error. The major error is that he compared my costing for a full 15-year period with the annual cost of the House of Commons.
	As a long-term friend and admirer of Mr Straw, it pains me to say what I now have to say: that he was talking absolute utter balderdash and nonsense. Mr Clelland pointed that out to him but apology came there none. I am sorry to say this of an old friend, but Mr Straw misled the House. In my knowledge of the other place, which is less than that of many other Members of this place, Ministers who mislead the House are expected to apologise; but I am long enough in the tooth not to have had high expectations that he would do so. Who would want to admit to making a howler that would make any schoolboy blush to the roots?
	I do not even ask him to apologise for misleading the House. I will be quite satisfied if he does something else: let him now publish the Government's best estimate of the cost, saying where his assumptions differ from mine. Let him level with the electorate and see then if his proposals retain their support.
	I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, said earlier in the debate, that this matter cannot be settled by pledges in manifestos which voters barely read; it can be settled only in the way that major constitutional issues are generally settled in this democratic era, in the way that devolution was settled and Europe was eventually settled, and in the way that the Government once proposed to settle voting reform—by a referendum in which every voter has his or her right to be heard. During such a referendum voters would learn more about the proposed change and about the virtues of this House, and far more than Mr Straw chose to disclose about the cost of what he is proposing. I am confident that they would then reject it, as I trust your Lordships will reject it tomorrow.

Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, we have had a marvellous debate both today and yesterday. I apologise to noble Lords who spoke when I was not in the Chamber as I was hosting a function in the Cholmondeley Room and could not get here.
	I agree with my noble friend Lord Waddington that by now everything must have been said. Nearly everything probably has been said, which is why I asked to speak on the second day. I wanted everything to have been said so that I could change the tempo for a moment and talk about what the House of Lords means to me, to all of you and, indeed, to the public at large. Unlike most noble Lords, I speak about the House of Lords twice a week, and have done so for years. I speak to Conservative constituencies, to Rotary clubs, where I am very popular, and to Soroptimist clubs. I do not even charge. I talk about what we are and what we do for this country. Wherever I go, people say that if they have any complaints at all about Parliament, they are about the other place, not this place.
	When the House of Lords reform debate was initiated a few years ago, I sat on the Conservative Front Bench, next to my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, and cried my eyes out. Nobody could understand why. I told all those around me that I had hay fever—as if you could have hay fever in November. The truth is that I loved this place from the day I came in right up until now. It represents the best of British history and tradition and a job well done. Every time that we interfere with it, we take away a little bit of something that is valuable.
	I became a government Whip within about six weeks of coming into the House. Before that I was chairman of the London Conservatives, so I knew what it was to be bossy. Life Peers ran away from me if they knew that I expected them to vote. But asking a hereditary Peer to vote was an entirely different thing if he did not think it was right for his country. They used to say, "It may be good for the Tory Party but my family have supported this country for years and years and I intend to continue to do so. I do not intend to vote as you wish just because you are telling me off". I used to reply, "Then stay at home; just don't come". That was the very best that I could hope for.
	I wondered afterwards why it was that history, tradition and all these things meant so much to me. I have explained it once before in the House so I shall not do so again in detail. However, my grandparents were immigrants. When they came to this country there was no such thing as benefits. They had to work for every single thing that they had. They were not well off and neither were my parents, but the one thing that they gained was a love of Britain. That has stayed with us and my children right the way through.
	I am not a dinosaur. I am certainly not saying that there cannot be change of some sort or another. However, it grieved me greatly when we lost so many of our hereditary brethren. I hope that if we go for an all-appointed Chamber—which I shall support—the remaining hereditary Peers will all be made Life Peers.
	The Commons walked blindly into an accident. They thought that a vote for an all-elected Chamber would be a tactical move. However, yesterday I heard many noble Lords on the other side of the House say, "Nobody on this side is listening to what the Commons said". The Commons could never in a million years have intended to produce the rubbish that it came up with. It is not possible. Never mind the general feeling, we should consider the individual feeling of a constituency MP. Why would he want another MP—representing a bigger area than himself with more people having elected him—in his part of the woods? He would not. The Commons has not thought the matter through. But this House thinks everything through. The bottom line is that we get legislation coming in from the other place which has not been looked at. Whole swathes of it have not even had the pages opened, if you ask me. They just have the guillotining, which many noble Lords have mentioned, and consequently they are not doing their job. Now, they are trying to stop us doing our job by making us just like them. It just will not do, and I am not prepared to stand by while it is happening. Too much has already happened to our constitution on our watch. It is time to say, "No further".
	We do not want an elected Chamber. We would lose, as so many other noble Lords have said, the abilities of people such as all those vice-chancellors, Bishops and Law Lords who have come here. They—the great and the good—are not going to stand for election. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, realises that they are not going to stand. I would love to have stood years ago if I had been selected for the other place; but not now. Good heavens above, I would be one of the first out the door if I had to stand for election.
	I beg noble Lords to please think very carefully when they vote tomorrow. Yesterday, a noble Lord said that probably everyone had made up their mind. They may very well have done; but one has no idea what one's children and grandchildren will say in years to come and we have lost the jewel in the parliamentary crown. They may ask, "What were you doing when that happened?". We amend, and we are a great revising Chamber. I cannot remember who said today that it is not such a great Chamber. It is a great Chamber. There are all those amendments that we make and send to the Commons; they keep 40 per cent of them. Where would they have been without us? Think very carefully before you cast your vote tomorrow.

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, a proposition has been mooted in some quarters, particularly in chapter 10 of the White Paper, regarding getting rid of the 92 hereditary Peers. It is that Peers' elections should be abolished. It is seen in some quarters as a kindly means of finally abolishing the last vestiges of the hereditary principle while retaining for their remaining lives the services of the present hereditary Peers, not all of whom are totally useless or "half-witted old duffers", which I understand is how one Member of another place recently described your Lordships—all your Lordships, I understand.
	I have to declare an interest not only as a hereditary Peer but also as a member of the Hereditary Peerage Association. There is no way that I can support the abolition of Peers' elections. We were elected in 1999 by our colleagues who were kicked out of this House in a cavalier and sometimes spiteful manner. To support the abolition of the only chance they or their heirs and successors have of ever again becoming Members of this House seems to me to be tantamount to saying, "I'm all right Jack and to hell with you lot", and I cannot do it. It just sticks in my gullet. I know that some of my elected colleagues think as I do, and I shall be very interested to hear what any of them who have not already spoken have to say about the matter.
	Having said that, I think Peers' elections in their present form are rather a farce, but they could be improved by one or two simple measures. At the election held last week, there were 43 candidates and 41 electors. It should not be difficult to devise a method of weeding out the candidates. The Hereditary Peerage Association might be able to help, or party organisations, such as, for the Conservatives, the ACP, might do it. Then again, we might revert to simple first-past-the-post voting, which even someone as thick as me can understand, instead of the alternative vote system—I know the Liberals would not like that. Finally, I think the electorate should be all the Peers in the party, life and hereditary. I know that I supported hereditary Peers only as the electorate in 1999, but, hindsight being a wonderful thing, I now believe that I was wrong and that election by all their Peers would give successful candidates greater what is nowadays, I am sorry to say, called "legitimacy", although I do not think that is a correct use of the word. Perhaps "gravitas" might be better. I was so glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, questioning the use of that term. All Members of this House are legitimate, regardless of how they got here, because they are all here in accordance with whatever law under which they were appointed or elected, as the case may be. I do not believe one can be more or less legitimate: either one is legitimate or one is not.
	However, at the end of the day, if any substantial reform of this House takes place, whether it is to make it a wholly or mainly elected House or a wholly or mainly appointed House, we, the 92, will have to go, because the basis on which our continued presence in this House rests is to ensure a second stage to the reform of this House, which was begun in 1999 with no idea of what shape it was to take beyond a wholesale cull of hereditary Peers. We are here until the legislation to implement that reform, with dates when it will come into force, has received Royal Assent. Until then, we shall remain. Peers' elections should continue, and we shall fight tooth and nail against any attempt to remove us before then. I shall vote for the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, tomorrow.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, it has been a pretty impressive two days of debate, and I venture into this debate with some hesitation, not least because I still regard myself as a comparatively new kid on the block. I was one of the first wave of 15 Peers selected by the newly established Lords Appointments Commission, the first samples of a new breed—introduced, it is hard to believe, only six years ago. However, one of the things that has prompted me to say something is that I have had the privilege—the advantage, indeed—of having been, in the role of a politically interested spouse, an observer, over more years than I care to remember, of just how both Houses and their inhabitants, operate and behave.
	I have one very simple, not new, but important point to make—that this House is very different from the other place. The inhabitants are different, too, and we behave differently. Why? It is because we have different functions to perform. That difference is very easily explained: it is in the Parliament Act. The noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, called for its repeal before further changes and, of course, he is right about that, because it is the other place, the elected House that takes the final decisions and has the last word. I suspect that not one of us, in either House, really wants to change that.
	The Houses themselves have been changing. Membership of the other place, for example, has become more and more dominated by professional politicians with considerably less experience than previously in the outside world of successful achievements in other careers and professions. So, increasingly, it has been more and more important to offer them advice, from very different points of view—independent advice, based upon a range of expertise and experience unparalleled in any other legislature in the world.
	I am constantly amazed—indeed humbled—when I contemplate the diverse expertise of the colleagues who were appointed with me. People like Lord Chan, so sadly no longer with us, who brought regional as well as ethnic diversity—a Chinaman from Merseyside—as well as a very distinctive medical expertise; or my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff, who will address us later this evening, who brings from Wales her own immensely energetic and knowledgeable blend of academic and medical skills; or my noble friend Lord Hannay—by no means the only one of his kind, but with hugely impressive international insights.
	To take much more recent examples, my noble friends Lord Low and Lord Bilimoria have already spoken today and are taking an active role in your Lordships' House. Last, but not least, my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham is the winner of this year's Channel 4 award of campaigning parliamentarian of the year for his outstanding contribution to debates and Bills on penal reform. Then there is the other, even wider, diversity of colleagues who have arrived here by other well tried routes including the political parties, of course, and the right reverend Prelates with their connectedness, as they put it, with both our national traditions and every corner of your Lordships' country.
	Two consequences of that diversity are worth emphasising. First, there is an increasing number of women Peers; a higher proportion of life Peers than MPs are women. They have been able to make contributions based upon their extensive practical experience of NGOs, as well as their professional lives and backgrounds. Secondly, there is the unique contribution that continues to be made by our legal fraternity. Their role today is even more valuable, as other noble Lords have said, with so many Bills being passed on to us by the other place with most of their clauses wholly unexamined. I have often voiced the view, perhaps partly to tease my noble kinsman, that the world contains far too many lawyers. That is certainly not the case in your Lordships' House. I have vividly in mind an early experience of the domestic violence Bill in Committee, in which the late Lord Donaldson would from time to time question whether a particular clause would be interpreted by the courts in the way that everyone—including the two noble Baronesses leading for the Government and Opposition—had assumed. The effect was electric and, almost without exception, appropriate changes were made to the Bill before Report stage.
	Perhaps most significant for me in today's House is that all our votes have the same weight and are as good as each other. That was not the position before 1999, with its built-in hereditary Tory majority. Until then, it was easy for critics to separate the so-called sheep from the goats—the hereditaries from the rest—and so discount the results accordingly. That does not happen today. For me, that is the most striking thing about this House: the extent to which we are able, and do, work together as partners in a common cause, regardless of our origins.
	That priceless pattern of mutual respect, that invaluable parity of esteem—if I may borrow a phrase from the long-running education debate—would be fatally damaged by the introduction of a totally different tranche of elected members. They would not hesitate—or if they did for a moment or two, the media would not—to claim their elected status as conferring extra so-called legitimacy upon them, thus discounting our own contributions. This House would once again be divided, with its authority correspondingly diminished, and we should have lost all the ground gained since 1999.
	Thus far, I have tried to underline the benefits, as they appear to me, of the present system of appointing Members of this House. It is notable, as other noble Lords have observed, that the so-called "cash for peerages" mischief only came to light because of the work of the commission established in this very context. That underlines how perverse it is to exploit that scandal as an excuse for replacing us all with elected Members. But, given the vital role it played, your Lordships should certainly have no difficulty in agreeing that the commission has more than earned its right to be given statutory status.
	It follows that I regard as totally misconceived the notion so casually commended in the first Division in the other place: the replacement of this House by a second, entirely elected, chamber. That strikes me as so thoughtless and reckless a proposal as to destroy entirely the credibility of any of the other alternatives. Accordingly, I shall vote for an entirely nominated Chamber, and against all the alternatives.

Lord Anderson of Swansea: My Lords, I am 40th in a list of 70. We have reached the stage of the debate where everything that can be said has been said, but not everyone has said it. Therefore I shall give my explanation of my vote.
	My vote is simply for an all-appointed Chamber, with safeguards, including the Appointments Commission. I shall do so not just on the principle that if it ain't broke, don't fix it—I do not suggest that there is no room for improvement, and noble Lords in earlier contributions have made suggestions for that—but essentially because an elected Chamber, the alternative to an appointed Chamber, has far greater disadvantages than the current arrangement.
	I stand amazed at my own consistency. To protect myself I looked up my vote in the equivalent position in February 2003, and note that I again voted for an all-appointed Chamber and for nothing else. At least I protect my back on that. I also recognise that, following last week's vote in the other place, there has been a fundamental change in the political context. The change since the vote in February 2003 has presumably been influenced by the change of membership after the last election, with new Members influenced by their first experience of ping-pong and consequent late hours, but also by the current allegations of cash for honours.
	Some say that the final majority for an all-elected Chamber was due to deliberate sabotage by those favouring no change—but that is not so clear. We cannot be sure of the motives of those who voted so overwhelmingly for an all-elected Chamber. It is surely quite a respectable position to hold that the only logical alternative to 100 per cent appointed is 100 per cent elected, and that hybrid solutions, of whatever balance, are inherently unstable and will not last.
	Indeed, last week's vote marked a major change from our usual pattern of constitutional development, broadening down from precedent to precedent. I suspect that many in that overwhelming majority ignored the subtle interrelationship between the component parts of our constitution, as well as the many unintended consequences that follow; not only the step on the road to disestablishment of the Church of England, but also a major step on the road to a written constitution, with a constitutional court and judges appointed for their perceived political leanings.
	In a perfect world, there should perhaps have been a constitutional convention, looking not only at the relationship between the two Houses but also at that between Westminster and the devolved administrations, as well as reform of the other place itself. But that comprehensive approach is not the way we do constitutions in this country, however compelling the case may be for that convention. To suggest it now would be considered as just another delaying tactic. In my judgment the debate last week ignored the argument that if we seek such a radical change we cannot limit the exercise; we cannot fail to look in the mirror and see the need for reform of the other Chamber as well.
	What should be the guiding principles of reform? Fundamental should be the aim of preserving the best of your Lordships' House today, after the 1999 reforms, as a deliberative and revising Chamber, with opportunities for second thoughts for Government and Opposition. It is one of our key constitutional checks and balances. This House is an expert Chamber, a point very well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. We are also a less partisan Chamber.
	Mr Straw argued that the reforms would preserve the primacy of the other place. That can surely only be partly true. Yes, the other place will elect the Prime Minister and retain the power of the purse, but elections are bound to create a second Chamber that is more assertive and more likely to challenge the other place.
	What, then, are the claimed advantages of a wholly or partially elected Chamber? These include that the second Chamber will be more legitimate and more accountable. That legitimacy will depend on the level of participation at elections. If few vote, the legitimacy will be correspondingly reduced. Further, if there is PR on a party list in large constituencies, on the European election model, there will be only limited accountability to the electorate. A totally elected Chamber will lose part of its expertise. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, gave a litany of those on the Cross Benches who make a substantial contribution. Even if, as seems unlikely, many senior figures from the professions are prepared to take a party label to get into a wholly elected second Chamber, it is even more unlikely that they will be selected at party caucuses or selected high enough on the party lists to be elected.
	We saw an illusion of the idea that new elections would draw on a totally different reservoir of talent in the elections to the Welsh Assembly. Again, if there is, say, a 12-year term, how will that make those in the elected Chamber more accountable? What sanctions will there be if they fail to attend or attend only fitfully? What happens if they switch parties? What accountability is there at the end of their 12-year term when they do not have to face the electorate again? Even with open lists, there will not be much transparency. Even if the lists are open, it will be difficult in multi-Member constituencies for the electorate really to know the candidates and to move the position of those candidates in the list. The real choice will again be left to the ever-reducing selectorate of the political parties. So, much will depend on the process of selection and the voting system. I am very sceptical of the claims for greater legitimacy and greater accountability.
	Obviously, any solution is a matter of balance and there is no perfect balance of all the relevant factors. One hundred per cent elected ignores the very special contribution that Cross-Benchers make to the quality of debate. Today's debate is surely only the starting point of what promises to be a long march and a long process with several votes along the way. Like the vote in the other place, tomorrow's vote will be only an expression of opinion on the ideal solutions. Later there may have to be compromise. Then I and others may have seriously to consider voting for the less attractive option of 80:20. For now, I shall vote only for option one—an all-appointed Chamber as amended.

The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I do not think that we went that far; there was not a queue of noble Lords.
	I then come to the question of why I am here. Many will say that they can see no possible valid reason; but the reason I am here, which is the same for my noble friends Lord Lucas and Lord Caithness, and the other hereditary Peers, was to make sure that there was not a completely appointed House. That is why Lord Cranborne did his deal; to make sure that there could be no fully appointed House. We should therefore not be going down the line of having a fully appointed House. I remember my noble friend Lord Ferrers at the time pointing out that when we went, the next people on the line would be the life Peers, and they all said, "No, no, it will pass by on the other side". Now what has happened? Lo and behold, the life Peers are also facing an element of chop. They are actually finding it much less pleasant than even we did, which is why they have all been taking on what I could call the Longford role.
	We have been talking a lot about Commons supremacy. Of course the Commons has supremacy. The Prime Minister can be Prime Minister only if he commands a majority in the House of Commons. In around 1340, your Lordships' House decided that it did not want to be involved in taxing subtenants, and said to the king, "No, we are not going to have anything to do with taxing, thank you very much. If you want to go and beat up the French with longbows on the Continent, get our subtenants to volunteer to pay for it properly, rather than asking us to tell them to pay for it". That is why the Commons has supremacy in taxation.
	Furthermore, there are the Parliament Acts. I enter a slight caveat on the Parliament Act, because I believe that in the Law Lords' judgment on the then Hunting Bill there is a very slight caveat that messing about with this House against its will may not be Parliament Act-able. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will be able to correct me if I am wrong on that, but I am pretty certain that it is there, so we have to be careful about that. That is the only place. There is obviously the extension of the life of the Commons.
	We do have a written constitution; everything that we know about the constitution is written down somewhere. It is just not all written on one piece of paper. We cannot write it on one piece of paper—well, we could—because of precedent and no Parliament being able to bind its successor. We have a written constitution.
	I therefore come down in favour of a hybrid House because, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, said, this House has been hybrid for 800 years. Hybridity is present here. We elected Peers, as one likes to say as a joke, are one source; the appointed majority are another; there are Law Lords and there are Bishops, all of whom come through a different process of arrival. There is nothing new in hybridity. Before, in the days of hereditary peerage, there were the Scots elected peerage on one side and the Irish on another, and before that there were the abbots and the Bishops of the church. There is nothing new in hybridity.
	I strongly feel that we should be able to allow people in some way to appoint Peers for a bit. That is what it is. It is not election; it is people appointing a Peer. The suggestion of the semi-open list is anathema. That is far worse than anything else that has been contemplated. That is the worst of all methods of election. If we have Peers appointed by a process of election, the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and others, that they cannot be accountable, falls away. If you carry that argument to its logical conclusion, any Member of the House of Commons who is elected and says that they are not going to stand at the next election immediately loses his legitimacy. They do not; some people are not going to stand again, and it does not stop them being legitimate.
	The bane of Parliament is the over-control of parties, so we would have to devise—now is not the time for me to go into it—a system whereby the election of people was more divorced from parties. If you do that, you will see the continuation of the process. The House now uses its powers much more frequently. I am open to correction but I believe that, since 1999, this House has defeated the Government on opposed resolutions about 800 times, and the Government have accepted about 400 of those. I am in danger of changing my name to Lord Longford, but we are doing a better job than we did when composition was completely illegitimate.
	I want this House to have arguments with the House of Commons; I want it to make life difficult for government. If we have an elected element, we will be able to do that. It is not right that a king's Government can always get the business that they want. I do not suggest that we go back to when Pitt proposed both the abolition of the slave trade and a reform Bill—I think that it was 1788—and lost both of them; those are major government Bills. However, it is not necessary that every Government should get through everything written in their manifesto, which may be out of date five minutes later. We must make law-passing more difficult for Governments, not easier. I hope that we will be much more inclined to go back to a balanced Whig constitution, which is what my forebears fought for in 1688.

Lord Birt: My Lords, I think that I bat at 99, a number I associate with sweet confectionary. The century will soon be up.
	I feel that I must respect—and I do—the strong democratic urge now manifest in another place, but respect alone is insufficient reason for this House to set off on a journey into the unknown, a journey with as yet no clarity at all about the ultimate destination.
	There are many conceivable designs for a parliament and few obvious rights and wrongs—one Chamber or two, or different combinations of function, powers, composition and accountability. Our constitutional architecture has evolved. Even if, starting from here, we would not set out to invent it, the current parliamentary system has many advantages. The national will, when it makes one of its periodic shifts, can produce decisive single-party Governments in the first Chamber, with a powerful following wind for reform. That is a strength. On the other hand, the strengths of this largely appointed House are its bedrock of experience and expertise, and its independence of spirit. As such, this House is a counterweight to the growing professionalisation of politics—to the narrowing of experience evident in all parties in the first Chamber. It is a counterweight too to the inevitable conformity born of party discipline.
	As almost everyone has said, this House is essentially an advisory body, a revising Chamber. It has few powers. Its advice can be ignored, even if invariably it is not. If we wished, we could continue to tinker with the existing model to make it work even more effectively. It appears to be common ground that we need an appointments system which vouchsafes that the best possible candidates are appointed to this House on all Benches. Secondly, even if as individuals some hereditary Peers clearly deserve to be here on personal merit—I hope some will remain—there can be no possible justification for the continuation of the hereditary principle, if the rationale for membership of this House is expertise and merit.
	Thirdly, I cannot see the justification for the bloc appointment to this House of members of the established Church. We are now resoundingly a multi-faith society, and increasingly a society of no faith. If we are to refine and improve the existing system, we would need a balanced representation of faith and conviction, and we need such voices to take their places among the Cross-Benchers, not on special Benches of their own.
	Fourthly and finally, I would be content if a truly advisory and appointed House, deepening and extending its expertise and capability, had reduced powers to delay legislation. However, after last week's vote, any thought of improving the present model may be pie in the sky; but if the principle of largely or wholly elected membership of the second Chamber proves paramount, we must surely stop, pause and think.
	We should proceed no further unless and until there is a clear, comprehensive and coherent proposition on the table, covering not just the composition but the functions, powers and accountability of both Houses of Parliament. At that point, we will need a persuasive case explaining why a new parliamentary system will perform more effectively than the old—why it will produce better governance of the United Kingdom.
	If such an argument is made in the future, and if it is compelling, I may place my vote for fundamental constitutional reform. In the mean time, and in the complete absence of any such argument, I shall vote only for the continuation of a system which, even if it can be improved, is of considerable constitutional merit.

Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Birt, for doing the count so that I know I am number 100 on the speakers' list. I count with my noble friend Lord Goodhart that, out of the previous 20 speakers, only three were, like me, in favour of a wholly or mainly elected House. I was beginning to feel a bit lonely until the splendid speech of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, for which I thank him very much.
	Noble Lords may think that this two-day debate on our future is long enough, but it is a mere hors d'œuvre in comparison with the meal our predecessors made of the Parliament Bill in 1911. I revisited the splendid account of the passage of that Bill that summer contained in the biography of Asquith by my old boss, Roy Jenkins, to see what we could learn for the historic challenge that we face 96 years on. He wrote:
	"The Lords turned distastefully to the Parliament Bill in the last week of May, and proceeded after a three-day debate to give it a Second Reading without a Division. But it was made clear that this emollient attitude was only a prelude to severe amendment in Committee. Knowledge of the exact severity of the amendments, however, was not available until after a Whitsun Recess lengthened to include the Coronation".
	There was no danger of burnout through overwork in those days. Roy Jenkins's account continued:
	"The Lords returned to the Parliament Bill on June 28th and proceeded in six committee days to make a massacre of the Government's intentions".
	The King then made it clear that he was prepared to create as many new Peers as were necessary; Asquith had a list of 249 "men of liberal conviction" in his pocket, and,
	"from this point the battle became an internal one within the Unionist party".
	The battle continued and the final Division was taken at 10.30 pm on 10 August, when the House decided not to insist on its amendments. Most Unionists abstained. The Parliament Act became law and the King left London to join the Duke of Devonshire's shooting party at Bolton Abbey.
	What can we learn from that? Listen to Roy Jenkins's devastating analysis of the tactics of Lansdowne, the Unionist leader in the Lords:
	"He neither dug in for resistance à outrance nor prepared himself for retreat. He merely decided to stay where he was for as long as he could in the hope that delay might shift the dispute onto slightly different ground and enable the powers of the Lords to be preserved. He started on a course which six months later was to lead him into a position of humiliating weakness".
	Substitute "composition" for "powers" in that passage and that is precisely the position today. The House of Commons has spoken loud and clear. We now know that this House will inevitably become wholly or mainly elected. We in this place can either accept the primacy of the Commons in its decision and argue and engage constructively with it, or we can forget 1911, turn ourselves, and force the Commons to ram through with the Parliament Act, as it will, a blueprint for a reformed Chamber on which we will have had little or no say.
	I want us to preserve the best of our traditions and pass on to a democratic Chamber all we can of the independence of thought, expertise, rational debate and painstaking process of revision and scrutiny that I have valued more with each of the seven years that I have been in this place. Although I will vote for both options, there is a good case for preferring the 80 per cent elected and 20 per cent appointed option to a wholly elected House, but only on the basis that all party-political appointments end and all new independent or Cross-Bench Peers are appointed by a totally independent statutory commission.
	Either way, the timing and method of elections to this House must be carefully planned to give the maximum freedom to individual voters to choose which candidates they prefer—women, rather than men, for example. We want a system that is achievable, whereby well known Members of this House, for example the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, could be elected without official party backing. To ensure a reasonable turnout without making elections to this House a sideshow of a general election to the other place, I propose a "Super Thursday" election day in June every five years, with elections to the second Chamber, the European Parliament and local councils—the local council elections having been moved from May.
	If 20 per cent of the membership of our House continued to be appointed, we could still ensure, as the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford put it,
	"that the many voices of the faiths and the Churches are heard in this place".
	He was right to say:
	"Many voices, including some crucial religious ones, need to be heard in the shaping of our public life".—[Official Report, 12/3/07; cols. 475-76.]
	However, we should not take the word "crucial" too literally. If a fully reformed House ends with about 100 appointed Members, as it would, there could not be room for even 16 Bishops from a single faith established in only one of the four nations of the United Kingdom. Of course, the statutory Appointments Commission will need to ensure that the Church of England is properly represented along with the many other Christian denominations. Lately, there has been talk that anti-Semitism is again rearing its ugly head in our country. What a boon it would be to have the Chief Rabbi or an equally authoritative voice of Judaism in our House. A statutory commission should work hard also to let more Hindu and Muslim voices be heard—and I do not believe that we have a single Sikh. I was encouraged, in Church last Sunday, to make these points by a retired occupant of the Bishops' Bench.
	If we want to work towards a smooth transition to a mainly elected House, personal Prime Ministerial patronage must stop. The Government's White Paper argues against it; three out of every five Peers—366 out of 614 in this House—have been appointed under Mr Blair. That is enough of a legacy for anyone. We die off steadily at about 20 a year—six so far in 2007—so a smooth transition to a House elected by thirds every five years is manageable without compulsory redundancies, but only as long as there are no new appointments. If Mr Blair drew up a resignation Honours List, after all, it could look pretty odd. Would it include post-dated peerages, pending possible prosecutions? No, the Prime Minister should abide by the decision of the House of Commons.
	I return to the words of my mentor Roy Jenkins. He praised Asquith's moulding of events from 1909 to 1911, which, he said,
	"amounted to a masterly display of political nerve and patient determination. Compared with Lansdowne's sullen lack of foresight or Balfour's casual indecisiveness, his leadership was outstanding".
	That is what the forces of reform need today. The leadership of all three parties is on our side. We have a clear vote in the House of Commons behind us and we will win. The only question for your Lordships' House is whether, after what amounts to a two-day cry of pain—that is what this debate really is—we will roll up our sleeves and get on with what we do best: revising, scrutinising and improving the 2008 or 2009 Parliament Bill when it comes from the Commons. In that way, we can really shape our future. But, if we spit into the political wind, as in 1911, we will fail our Parliament and our people.

Lord Bowness: My Lords, many noble Lords, in particular my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, have already fully and persuasively argued the case for an all-appointed House. They have explained the merits and the advantages of an appointed House in relation to its role, which is different from that of the other place. It is not a matter of how good or how much better we are; this House is different and has a different job. The noble and learned Lords have highlighted the difficulties arising from a hybrid House and the fundamental change in the long-established relationship between your Lordships' House and the other place that would be created by a wholly or largely elected House, to say nothing of the false accountability of Members here being elected, by courtesy of a party list, for 15 years with no need to seek re-election.
	At this stage of the debate, I shall not try your Lordships by repeating all the arguments, save to say that I entirely agree with what has been said. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, who has already done so much to promote the cause of an appointed House, will comprehensively address towards the end of the debate the issues that have been raised.
	If in 2007 we were starting with a blank sheet of paper, we would not create this House, but that is not what we are doing. Some seek to change the arrangements at which we have arrived after 700 or 800 years of history and constitutional development. We are where we are. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde referred to the preservation of the ethos of the House, something for which the hereditary peerage can claim credit. The original life appointees to the House were wise enough to accept it and we who came much later were fortunate enough to inherit and benefit from it. The retention of the 92 current elected hereditary Peers as life Peers in a wholly appointed House would ensure that continuity and link between the old House of Lords and the reformed House. The notion that the manner of our working could easily, if at all, be transferred to a House formed by a totally different process is optimistic, as is the notion that the supremacy of the House of Commons could be maintained in the face of a wholly, or largely, elected House.
	The advocates of election seek a strengthened House with greater power, but that argument has to be at odds with Commons primacy. Equally unrealistic is the idea that the same conventions as those to which we currently subscribe could or should apply, a point made yesterday very eloquently and clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham of Felling. He emphasised that the recommendation in his committee's report was on the basis of the current composition. In opening the debate, and while not supporting any one particular option, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, said:
	"This process of scrutiny and change is effected in the main without significant delay and without gridlock between the two Houses. It is a beneficial part of our constitution. From time to time, the process is attended by tensions between the two Houses, but the conventions are observed. Legislation is amended by your Lordships' House and the Government get their business".—[Official Report, 12/3/07; col. 453.]
	We should be under no illusions that the media coverage of the whole so-called cash-for-peerages affair has been damaging, but in this debate, as we were reminded by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, we should be careful not to be influenced by matters that have not yet led to any charges being brought or indeed, if they were brought, by the outcome of any trial.
	In any event, any problem about the process of recommendation for appointment is well on its way to being solved and could be solved by the statutory Appointments Commission. I believe that that commission has the potential to contribute a significant measure of reform to an appointed House. If created, not only could it consider the possible appointments from the point of view of probity and integrity—whosever's nominations they may be—but it should be appointed and approved by both Houses of Parliament. It should be charged with guidelines approved by Parliament, and only capable of being changed by Parliament; it should be charged with ensuring the relevant ethnic, gender and regional balance of the House to ensure a mix of expertise and experience and to guarantee that no party obtained an overall majority; and it should crucially maintain a strong independent element, which currently forms our Cross Benches.
	We are also told that there is consensus between the major parties for reform. There may be consensus among the party leadership for a largely elected or wholly elected House, and no doubt noble Lords opposite have examined the votes of their colleagues in another place. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said yesterday that Conservative Members of Parliament had voted against every option. But he will also have noted that more voted for appointment than any other option. I hope that tomorrow in this House there will be a large vote from this side of the Chamber for a wholly appointed House. We have a free vote, but my party still advocates as its policy an 80 per cent elected House. I say in all humility to the Front Bench: how can we be expected to support a policy of which a majority disapproves and which, I suggest, originated as a not very well thought out reaction to an earlier White Paper? Had there at that time been a willingness to ensure fair treatment of the 92 hereditary Peers, the issue might well have been resolved; there is certainly a very good chance that we would have had a statutory Appointments Commission in place. Perhaps it was a lost opportunity that we shall live to regret.
	The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor also said yesterday:
	"This is an issue beyond party politics".—[Official Report, 12/3/07; col. 452.]
	Matters of this kind are too important to be decided on a purely party basis. There should be consensus in Parliament for a change to a system that is generally conceded to work well. It should be in the interests of Parliament and of the country. I appeal to the Front Benches, and particularly to the Front Bench of my party, to listen to the views that have been expressed and, in future discussions, which I am sure there will be, to listen to the voice of the parliamentary party as a whole and to the Back Benches. I shall vote for the option of a wholly appointed House and against all the other options.

Lord Moran: My Lords, we were all perhaps a little stunned by the votes in the House of Commons last week, but we should not have been too surprised by the massive support for an elected second Chamber because, day after day, MPs, like everyone else, have been reading the extraordinary reports of the cash-for-honours inquiry at No. 10, which have inevitably discredited the option of Peers appointed by the Prime Minister, although that should not put out of court appointments by an independent statutory Appointments Commission. I do not think that we should be too rattled by the massive Commons votes, although they led the Times to lead its front page, a trifle prematurely, with the headline "Farewell to the Lords", reporting that MPs had decided by a huge majority to end over 700 years of parliamentary history.
	We have plenty of time and should say what we believe is right. I am in favour of arguing for the retention of the status quo, not for ever, but for the foreseeable future. The public seem reasonably satisfied with what we do and, as at present constituted, this House seems to work pretty well. We should bear in mind the fact that the move for reform is being orchestrated by professional politicians and nothing has been said to the public, who may think that Parliament should spend its time on matters of much greater concern to them. It would be inconceivable that in a country such as the United States major changes in the constitution could be discussed without the fullest consultation with the states and the nation as a whole.
	Last week, there were votes in the Commons for the eviction of the 92 elected hereditary Peers, of whom I have the privilege to be one. We should be grateful to those noble Lords who have suggested that we should be transformed into life Peers or allowed to stay without replacements by by-elections so that one by one we gradually fade into the sunset.
	The White Paper says that the primacy of the House of Commons should remain in any reform of this House and that this House should be a complement to the Commons. However, it also says that the issue of legitimacy goes to the heart of the question of reform and that it is increasingly difficult to justify a second Chamber where there is no elected element. In this context, it is worth pointing out something that no one seems to have mentioned, which is that between 50 and 80 per cent of our legislation is now produced not in Westminster, but in Brussels by the European Commission, which has no democratic legitimacy at all, while its one member from the United Kingdom is appointed by the Prime Minister. In the light of that, the issue of democratic legitimacy is a good deal less important than the White Paper suggests.
	The real value of this House is the contribution of individuals from all parts of the House, not only to the scrutiny of such legislation as is left to us by Brussels, but also in putting forward views based on long experience and special knowledge. I believe that, ideally, party politics should be left to the House of Commons and that all Members of this House should speak and vote as individuals. That is probably too much to expect at present, but the more party discipline and whipping can be reduced, the better it will be.
	During my 23 years in this House, I have taken part in a good number of inquiries by Select Committees, usually sub-committees of the European Union Committee and the Science and Technology Committee. I was continually impressed by the way in which noble Lords who belong to political parties left their political prejudices at the door and took part in the work of the committees as individuals. Those committees, reflecting individual views free from the control of the Whips, are by general consent one of the most useful aspects of the work of this House.
	Most of us when looking back on our time in the House will surely think that the most significant moments came from individual contributions, not least in this remarkable debate. The least attractive memories are of votes determined by massive whipping. One of the most dispiriting aspects of our deliberations is the sight of long lines of Peers entering the Chamber to vote, often without having listened to the debate or being aware of the issues at stake, simply responding to being whipped like sheep being driven towards the dipping tank.
	I am opposed to the Government's proposal that any election to a reformed House of Lords should be conducted by a partially open regional list system, as that would mean that votes could be cast only for parties. Voters should be able to vote for individuals. A hybrid House on the lines proposed in the White Paper would never work and I do not believe that election would produce a good input into the House. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, was right when he pointed out that we should probably attract only third-rate candidates.
	Therefore, all in all, I think that we should vote against the proposals in the White paper and for an appointed House. The more things can be left as they are, the better.
	My Lords, no! No! No! This is not a White Paper, it is a bit of straw. This is not a bad Bill, nor a dreadful Bill, but a terrible Bill. It is designed to destroy democracy, cancel history, destroy heritage and remove freedom of choice. What is wrong with patronage? It has held this country together for hundreds of years, and most of us sitting in this House are beneficiaries of patronage in one form or another. I have been in this House for 20 years less than the noble Lord, Lord Moran, but I agree with most of what he said. I know that many noble Lords have heard time and again the comment that if it is not broken, you don't need to fix it. In my three years in the House, I have been amazed by the length and breadth of knowledge imparted by fellow Peers. I am proud to be a Member of the House of Lords, and I believe that all noble Lords are. In her speech, my noble friend Lady Miller, who is sitting in front of me, typified everything that I feel about the House, and she has been here much longer than me.
	The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, who is not in his place, spoke about the established church and the introduction of representatives of other faith groups. As a proud Jew, I am happy that the 24 Bishops of the established church sit in this House, but I would be even more proud if the Chief Rabbi were able to join us and give us the benefit of his wisdom. The greatest brains in industry, the military—the Air Force, the Army and the Navy—and the law, including former Law Lords and Lord Chief Justices, add kudos to the House, and I do not understand why the Government want to destroy something that has stood the test of time for so many years. Many illustrious former politicians who have served their country well have been put into the House of Lords to give it the benefit of their experience.
	In my few remarks, I want to elaborate on why I believe that we should vote for an unchanged House, and I hope my arguments will fall on sympathetic ears and bear fruit. It appears to me that the Government do not know what they want. If the House will pardon the analogy on the first day of Cheltenham, it sounds like a seven-runner horse race with options. The mere fact that Members have been given seven different options—seven different runners—suggests that the Government do not really know what they want to do, and that is no great surprise to us on these Benches. On page 16 of the White Paper, noble Lords will note that there was a free vote in 2003. It says:
	"As the tables below indicate, no clear consensus could be found".
	Perhaps that is why we have been presented with so many different options.
	The House of Lords considers itself to be a revising Chamber that looks carefully at government legislation. Where appropriate, it makes adjustments to the wording of many clauses and, in some cases, actively opposes the wishes of Parliament. Were it not for the House of Lords, we would not have the kind of democracy for which we all wish and hope. Without it some of us might think that we have a benign dictatorship, and with government as it is today, it is no idle thought that in time without a proper representative House of Lords that could happen.
	Do noble Lords not think that there may be another reason why we are being faced with this so-called reform? Maybe the Government do not like losing occasionally. When I was in the gambling business I didn't like losing occasionally, but I didn't try to change the law so that I didn't lose. Perhaps the Government these past 10 years have not been used to losing and now that they are, they do not like it. However, that is only a thought.
	Having heard that the House of Commons wants to eliminate us, we must all be concerned that we send the right message to the House of Commons and to the country that ours is a great House that keeps the Government of whatever colour in check whenever necessary. We do not automatically vote against the Government through a fit of pique, but we do where we think the legislation is wrong or incorrectly written.
	One of the things that impressed me the most is the way the House of Lords carefully deciphers every word in the production of a Bill. How do we, as threatened Members of the House of Lords, resist? I say that we should all vote for a purely appointed House, and that we do not follow the route of all the other options because they will destroy the status quo. I am a great believer in the status quo, democracy and history. I believe that this House will vote showing its wish to preserve democracy and history. I encourage noble Lords to vote with me.

Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, it has been a fascinating debate, with every possible shade of opinion expressed. When lower down the batting order—I think that I am speaker no. 106—you are faced with the situation that allegedly confronted a Minister who, in an aside to his civil servant, said: "What can I say? Everything that can possibly be said on this subject has already been said". To which the Sir Humphrey reply was, as has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Anderson, "But not by everyone". I hope I will not fit the "everyone", and I will endeavour to follow the Chief Whip's advice and avoid reiteration. That is probably an impossible objective.
	My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer in his opening address invited us to accept at face value the other place's decision. Normally I would be willing to accept his recommendations, but I find this proposition difficult to accept once you examine the voting record of last Wednesday's decisions. When the tectonic plates of the other place started to shift last week, the tide went out, leaving Motions calling for "a fully appointed House", a 20 per cent elected, 40 per cent, 50 per cent or 60 per cent elected, like stranded whales on a deserted beach. When the tide came back it delivered a veritable tsunami of votes for a fully elected House. I might have been prepared to accept that decision at face value if it had not come to light that a number of those who voted for a fully appointed second Chamber also voted for a fully elected second Chamber. You could say that they believed in the polar extremes, but you cannot blame me for having a scintilla of scepticism on the matter.
	I next want to address the allegations of a democratic deficit. The British Parliament has evolved over hundreds of years to its present state, not in a logical straight line—going through a civil war, that would have been difficult—with a constitutional monarchy now and a link between Church and state. It is a curious hybrid that works. Does it work perfectly? No, I doubt that it does. But it recognises in the final analysis the primacy of the other place. Of course if you put it under some kind of microscope and examine the constitutional parts you can identify an unelected, unaccountable second Chamber, but the democratic whole is greater than the sum of the parts, because the role of our House is to scrutinise and revise, not to challenge the primacy of the other place. As no party has an absolute majority as a result of previous reforms, it is a role which recent history shows the House performs well.
	A fully elected second Chamber will inevitably challenge the current conventions and impinge on the primacy of the other place, creating an unintended democratic deficit. I do not want to comment on the current situation about allegations on the appointment of Peers, except to say that the current Appointments Commission instituted by this Government successfully challenged the validity of some nominations.
	I will support a fully appointed second Chamber, recognising that that will mean the removal of the remaining hereditaries, but I would support their conversion to life Peers, although sometimes the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, stretches that generosity. He did say that he was "the grit". However, I feel that we cannot totally ignore the tide of change. Despite the view of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that it is dead in the water—I hope that he is wrong—I would be prepared to vote for a 50 per cent hybrid. I believe that would retain many of the strengths of our current Chamber—its richness and diversity—and combine experience with a new elected element. Inevitably, we would have to redefine the conventions with that kind of hybrid Chamber to ensure that the primacy of the Commons was not challenged.
	If noble Lords do not like much in the White Paper—and I gather from some of the contributions we have heard during this lengthy debate that many do not—I believe the point made that in going for the best you can sometimes end up with the worst. So I think that this House has to accept that at some point in this democratic process, there will be a need to compromise. If we are asking the other place to listen, then we have to heed that advice.
	As my noble friend Lord Anderson said, this is going to be a long process. There are many other aspects that we will need to look at. For example, the size of the House will have to be addressed, probably over a period of time. As a number of noble Lords have said, we are in a 21st century multi-faith society. I have no desire to see the abolition of the church's representation, but we need a more ecumenical representation than we currently have.
	Unlike one comment I heard, it would be unwise if we sought to somehow say that this Chamber had the right to challenge the validity of the Parliament Acts in a situation where there has been a genuine attempt to reach consensus between the two Houses.

Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, I shall try not to burden the House with a lengthy repetition of all the arguments so eloquently put by noble Lords on all sides. I was particularly impressed by the excellent speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, with whom I was in complete agreement, and that of my noble friend Lady Miller, by which I was deeply moved.
	Of one thing I am certain: in a country of our size there is no public demand for yet more expensive elected politicians, particularly if the method of their election will deliberately have made them remote from those they are supposed to represent.
	Mr Straw presented his White Paper as offering an important opportunity to reform Parliament to serve the people better, and stated that his approach, a hybrid House, represented the best chance to move forward gradually and by seeking to build consensus around some of the key issues.
	However, as was correctly remarked by Sir Patrick Cormack last Wednesday, Members of another place have not endorsed the approach recommended by Mr Straw, rather they have voted to abolish your Lordships' House and replace it with something completely different.
	It is notable that some 70 of those who voted for the all-elected option also voted for an all-appointed Chamber. I wonder which of the two completely conflicting options they really support. In such circumstances, it is unacceptable that use of the Parliament Acts has already been threatened, although I doubt that they could or that it was ever envisaged that they would be used by another place to abolish your Lordships' House in its present form.
	The noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale of Richmond, at the time of the petition to the Appellate Committee in connection with the Hunting Bill, both held that, by accepting a Bill to prolong the maximum life of a Parliament beyond five years, Parliament was also disabled from using that procedure to remove the exception. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Steyn, expressed himself as being deeply troubled about assenting to the suggestion of the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General that the 1949 Act could be used to change the composition of your Lordships' House or to abolish it.
	Leaving aside the legal arguments, it is frequently argued that the introduction of a substantial elected element into your Lordships' House would enhance its legitimacy. Legitimacy does not derive only from the ballot box and I firmly believe that a second Chamber constituted on either of the bases approved last week by another place would be an unworthy and ineffective successor to your Lordships' House. Its authority would be further diminished if the suggestion that Ministers of the Crown could not sit in this place were to be implemented.
	In a democracy, power must ultimately reside with the people, but the people need protection against the untrammelled use of executive power by a Government using a large majority in another place. Your Lordships' House in its present form provides such protection. It is also widely recognised for the successful role that it plays in scrutinising and improving legislation—something that the other place does rather little of nowadays.
	In a federal state, there is a logical basis for two elected Chambers in a bicameral system. Despite the Government's untenable and deeply flawed devolution settlements, we remain basically a unitary state. The noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, has persuaded me that we are no longer a pure unitary state and Scotland has always retained its special features, such as its own legal and education systems, but we are still, I think, closer to being a unitary state. We have a 100 per cent democratic system because the will of the elected House prevails. We cannot be more than 100 per cent democratic. To introduce directly elected Members to this place, especially under a list system—which is, in effect, another method of political appointment—would not enhance its ability to scrutinise and improve legislation and require the Government of the day to reconsider.
	I lived in Japan for 11 years and thus have observed the Japanese political process at close quarters. The White Paper mentions the Japanese second Chamber, the Sangiin, which has a perfectly good English name: the House of Councillors. The White Paper does not mention that the Japanese upper House, which is wholly elected but possesses restricted powers, enjoys little respect among the people and is regarded by many as being completely superfluous. It was created by the post-war Government under the American occupation to replace the previous House of Peers, which was part-hereditary, part-appointed and modelled on your Lordships' House.
	My view is that a good way forward might have been to construct a Chamber representative of the new estates of the realm: the CBI, the TUC, teachers and doctors. If the Church of England can decide who should represent it in your Lordships' House, so can those other bodies. There will be a need for a standing commission to determine which bodies should be entitled to select or elect Members and which should not. Unfortunately, that option is not one to be put your Lordships' House tomorrow, however much merit it may have.
	I was lucky enough to be returned to this place through the much derided hereditary by-election system, which has been described by some noble Lords as ludicrous and absurd. The system of by-elections should be improved, as proposed by the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun. It is illogical that, at present, life Peers are entitled to vote in by-elections only to fill vacancies in the Deputy Speakers' list; they should also be entitled to vote in by-elections in their own party lists. Having crossed a narrow bridge myself, I do not want to be complicit in drawing it up to prevent others from crossing it in future.
	Of course, it is impossible to defend the hereditary principle in democratic terms, but if being elected is the sole criterion of democratic legitimacy, to be elected by anybody is better than to be elected by nobody. I was elected by an electorate of 48 people, which is not many, but I suppose that that makes me 16 times more legitimate than the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. However, I learned yesterday that the noble Lord is the only dairy farmer on the Labour Benches, which shows that the hereditary principle has provided a valuable resource to the Benches opposite.
	I also take this opportunity to welcome back to these Benches my noble friend Lord Cathcart. Last week, I received a letter from the Local Government Information Unit and the new Local Government Network urging me to speak in favour of reserved seats for local government in a reformed House. My noble friend has served as a district councillor for Breckland district in Norfolk for 10 years, so I shall be able to reply to the local government bodies that the recent by-election has helped them in achieving their aim.
	I shall be supporting the Motion in the name of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne because I believe that all of the other options will produce a less good House than the present one. I cannot support any of the elected options because they introduce hybridity between those who represent electors and those who do not and because they envisage a bad system of election which I think is not democratic or representative.

Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, I am always glad to follow the noble Viscount, who puts his views clearly. I am glad that he mentioned the Far East, as I shall. This is a minimal intervention and has to be a subjective one, as one who speaks as an independent and non-party individual. The last time that I took part in a debate on this subject, I seem to recall that I somewhat rashly suggested that life Peers, such as me, might have to consider the date of their 75th birthday to be their sell-by or retirement date in a reformed House. However, my next birthday brings me too close to that date for comfort so, for the record, I would now like to withdraw that rather short-sighted proposal.
	I strongly support those who said that they wanted a statutory Appointments Commission in place for an all-appointed Chamber to be selected when it comes to the vote on Wednesday. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, when referring to the two Houses, that we were "different" from the other place and other parts of the legislature. I entirely agree. Does the noble and learned Lord also agree that a fully elected Chamber would make us indistinguishable on most accounts from Members of the other place, with the exception of those of us who sit on these independent Benches?
	I have sat in your Lordships' House for the past 36 years. I am extremely grateful for the chance to have worked here, off and on, since 1971 and, at the same time, been allowed to maintain my outside commitments. I recall—as can perhaps only the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and one or two others—what happens when there is a majority in this House different from the one in the House of Commons. If we have an elected Chamber, that is a possibility. Matters of principle, such as nationalisation, renationalisation and denationalisation, made the work of this House almost impossible and nearly brought it to its knees. Night after night, amendments were made. It was redone and rehashed and I really despaired and wondered—I had come from business to this House—what sort of place this was going to be, because it seemed to be getting nowhere. That was a huge setback to British industry and was all a result of the political process that we had to deal with at the time.
	I am bound to say that, apart from many changes that have occurred since, I am left with the impression—perhaps as a result of my outside business activity—that the political world within the Palace of Westminster can, on occasion, be dangerously out of touch with reality. The forthcoming Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill might prove to be a case in point.
	It is essential that any new blood that is appointed in the future brings not only expertise but experience of the world outside politics. MPs these days seem to be drawn mainly from local political backgrounds that have been part of their lives from a very early age. There is nothing wrong with that, but to fill our reformed House with these same people on a party ticket, who may have reached their sell-by dates, rather like me in the other place, could lead to disaster. The party managers will be very happy because it makes their job nice and easy, but will the general public will happy about it? I doubt it.
	Finally, a fully appointed reformed House of Lords will be much more economical than a fully elected Chamber. It is important that the present arrangement of reimbursing expenses is used rather than a salary, because it allows us to come when we have something to say, and to be able to carry on with our outside activities to keep us up to date with what is going on in the real world. This would allow those Members with outside interests to continue them and to be good Members of this House if they were appointed, because they could work with two hats on.
	The noble Viscount mentioned his experience in the Far East. Many years ago—I think it was in the late 1970s—I was in China. Because my wife speaks at least six dialects, we did not have a language problem as most people do in that country. The question of Hong Kong and democracy came up. I asked some people, whom I do not want to quote because it was off the record, why they were so against democracy. They gave a very simple answer. "Why do you in the West, who have a choice of all types of political system, choose democracy?". I said, "Well, it's obvious, isn't it?". However, they said, "What is the point of having democracy, which elects people who are good only at politics. We need people who can get things done". I was rather taken aback by that, but that is very much the way in which things happen in the East. Whether we like it or not, authoritarian-type Governments get things done. We only have to look at Shanghai to see that.
	I am very pleased and privileged to have been, and still be, a Member of this House, although for how much longer we do not know. Nevertheless, it has been a privilege to take part in the history of its making, as we are indeed making it tonight and in the months and possibly years ahead.

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: My Lords, at this stage in the debate, I, like my noble friend Lord Trenchard, am very conscious of the strictures about repetition enjoined by the Captain of the Gentlemen at Arms before the debate began yesterday afternoon. The great constitutional issues have been extensively aired by minds more experienced and able than mine. I therefore hope that the House will forgive me if what follows appears to be a trifle parochial. I comfort myself with the thought that these proposals will eventually have to work, or not, at the worm's eye level.
	First, what are our functions to be? I share the view of many other noble Lords that functions should come first and form should follow. Indeed, it is the Government's obsession with form that has mudded the waters and confused the whole debate on this matter. So far, I have heard no clear answer to the function question, other than the rather woolly idea that we should do what we do now, but do it better. This I take to be the meaning of paragraph 1.2 of the White Paper, which states:
	"It should be a complement to the Commons, having a different kind of membership and providing a distinct voice in scrutinising and revising legislation".
	Why, under these proposals, will we do this task better? The Government's answer is that there will be an element, perhaps a large element, of democratic accountability. For us to undertake what the Government see as the Chamber's new role seems to me to be a proposition of dubious validity. I leave aside the incontrovertible fact that at present there is no real public demand for more paid politicians and elections. Among the chattering classes there may be, but in the country at large there certainly is not. More fundamental is the potentially negative impact on what this House already does rather successfully; namely, pretty effective scrutiny and revision of legislation. On that, I draw on my personal experience.
	I have just had the privilege of leading for my party on two substantial pieces of legislation, both of which began their passage through this House; that is, the Companies Act and the Charities Act. These Acts cover issues that are of great importance to the well-being of the country, but they are not for the most part politically controversial. In this House, we—when I say "we" I do not mean just my party: I mean the Liberal Democrats, Government Back-Benchers and Cross-Benchers—were able to subject each Bill to lengthy and detailed scrutiny, covering such specialist issues as the role of company secretaries and company law, and the use of permanent endowment in charity law.
	To the Government's credit, they listened to the arguments deployed and made several hundred changes to those two Bills which, by common consent, improved the quality of the legislation. By contrast, when these Bills went on their parliamentary progress to the other place, two features immediately became apparent. First, there was extensive use of programming Motions—guillotines, timetables, call them what you will—which meant that large chunks of both Bills were never discussed. Such limited Committee stage debate as there was focused predominantly on the political aspects of the Bill; for example, public benefit for private schools and hospitals in the Charities Bill and directors' duties in the Companies Bill.
	That is not—I repeat, not—a criticism. Elected politicians quite properly respond very sensitively to the day-to-day concerns of the electorate. Moreover, they want to discuss and be seen to be discussing issues that have visibility and will resonate with the media, pressure groups or the voter. So, in this brave new world of a wholly or overwhelmingly elected House, who do the Government think will undertake the unglamorous but nevertheless essential work of scrutiny? No one in the saloon bar of the Dog and Duck will have the least care about the role of company secretaries or permanent endowment. But there are really important issues of public policy to be addressed and to be resolved. To do so successfully needs a lot of time.
	My second question to the Government is: again in this brave new world, how will they avoid the House of Lords becoming a pale reflection of the House of Commons? Having a single long term of office is the answer in the White Paper, which is fair enough. But single long terms immediately underline the element of democratic accountability, which is the major argument for reform in the first place.
	I said that I agreed with the argument that function should come before form. Function needs to be addressed first not here but in the House of Commons where the Executive has run away with the ball. In our increasingly presidential system, the power of the Executive in the House of Commons, in those famous words, "has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished". The reality of the situation was revealed in the remark made during a speech in a debate in the other place last week that a Labour Member of Parliament who opposed the abolition of jury trial did not have to vote against the proposal and thus incur the wrath of his Whips because he knew the House of Lords would do the job for him.
	I see no attempt in these proposals to address these subtle and difficult issues. There is possibly only a desire on the part of the Government to be seen to be doing something, anything, even if the hybridity, which is apparently the Government's preferred outcome, is a clear recipe for instability with its in-built two classes of Members. And if there is not a desire to be seen to be doing something, it may be even worse—possibly a reaction to the increasing assertiveness of this House in recent years. This Government have no more real wish to weaken the Executive's grip than any of their predecessors—rather the reverse.
	The Government cannot have it both ways. So while I will of course listen carefully to the closing speeches, my present intention is to vote, first, for the continuation of a fully appointed House, broadly doing what it does now but with reforms, including much more transparent methods of appointment, and acting, albeit imperfectly, as a constitutional long stop; and, secondly, if this is not to be on offer, for a fully elected House which should be given the statutory powers necessary to provide an effective counterbalance and check to the elected dictatorship implicit in the present House of Commons structure. If a degree of legislative gridlock ensures, it will probably show that the brave new world of democratic accountability is working.
	My final word on this subject to the Government Front Bench is to venture to suggest that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor should keep firmly in his mind the advice contained in the Hilaire Belloc quotation from Cautionary Tales:
	"And always keep a-hold of Nurse
	For fear of finding something worse".

Lord Goodhart: My Lords, most Members of your Lordships' House, including me, believe that a system that got us here must be pretty good. Where I differ from most other Members is that I believe that election would be an even better system. I start from a very simple and basic proposition. In a democracy the legislature should be elected by the people; that means the whole legislature, not just one House, and it means being elected by the whole electorate, not by special interest groups, as suggested by the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard. Any departure from that proposition needs to be justified by very strong arguments indeed.
	Most Members of your Lordships' House want an appointment system, but appointment by party leaders has been discredited by recent events and, in any event, gives far too much opportunity for patronage. Appointment by an Appointments Commission, however impeccable its integrity, may be okay for the appointment of a limited number of Cross-Benchers, but would be absolutely wrong for the appointment of political Members. How could we justify having a quango of perhaps a dozen members having power to appoint all or most Members of one House of Parliament.
	We on all party Benches are politicians. We should earn the right to sit here by standing for election, which, after all, is what politicians are for. We have heard objections to election to membership. Some noble Lords say that it would damage the primacy of the House of Commons. That primacy is based on three pillars: first, on the control by the House of Commons of the supply of money, a rule applied for centuries which no one would suggest should now be changed; secondly, on the Parliament Act, which enables the House of Commons to legislate without the consent of your Lordships' House; and, thirdly, on the rule that the Government must have the confidence of only the House of Commons to remain in office. None of those three pillars would be removed or to any extent weakened by giving people the right to vote for membership of your Lordships' House. As the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, pointed out yesterday, a reformed upper House could not seize powers for itself. An elected House would and should enable your Lordships' House to exercise the power it already has, but to exercise it more effectively. That for me is the main purpose of the proposed reform. Such a House could, for example, make more use of its power to block secondary legislation if it thought that it was being used in an inappropriate way or needed amendment.
	It has been argued that there would be a decline in the quality of the Members; I do not believe that. Membership of an elected upper House would remain an honour and a privilege. It would continue to attract people who had finished their career in the House of Commons but wished to remain involved in national politics. It would attract people who have held senior positions in local government and want to move on to the national scene. And it would attract people like me, who have tried and failed to get into the House of Commons. These are all groups which already make up a large proportion of Members of your Lordships' House and who, I believe, would not be put off by the need to fight an election.
	There would be some loss of expertise among appointed Cross Benchers. I recognise that this expertise has value, though any such appointments should be time-limited because, as my noble friend Lord Smith of Clifton pointed out, expertise has a use-by date. I am therefore happy to retain 20 per cent as appointed Members in a reformed House, not all of them as experts but also to fill other gaps in the membership. Indeed, an 80:20 split would be my first preference.
	Your Lordships' House is not just a revising Chamber; it also has an important role, along with the judiciary and the media, in resisting the abuse of power by the Executive. Since the departure of most hereditaries in 1999, your Lordships' House has done a more effective job than was the case previously, and I believe that it will do a better job still if it has the legitimacy which comes from an 80 per cent or 100 per cent elected membership.
	There is a serious fault in your Lordships' House, one which, frankly, has been displayed during our debate of the past two days: it is too inward-looking. I would like to remind noble Lords how we appear to many outsiders by quoting a passage from the speech of John Bercow in the House of Commons last Tuesday. He said,
	"although some peers work exceptionally hard and frequently demonstrate great expertise, the most vociferous voices in support of the excellence of the existing House of Lords are existing Members of the House of Lords. On the principle that no one should be judge in his own cause, we should not attach much weight to that kind of special pleading".—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/07; cols. 1477-78.]
	I have no illusion about the outcome of tomorrow's votes, but noble Lords should not have the illusion that they can veto reforms of your Lordships' House for ever. Since 1999 the House has largely ceased to be constituted on a hereditary basis. This satisfies the first half of the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911. I still hope that the second half of the preamble, constitution of the second Chamber on a popular basis, will be completed in time for the centenary of the Parliament Act, and I mean the Parliament Act 1911 not the Parliament Act 1949.

Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, but, I am afraid, I remain convinced of the view, put to me yesterday evening, that there is really not a great deal to be added after the notable speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg. I am proud to say that he is one of a growing number of my ex-students who are to be found on all sides of the House, some of them in strange nooks and crannies, but they grow. Among them, he is perhaps the most remarkable. I am sure everyone would agree that we should be grateful to him for breaking a silence which has too long enclosed him when sitting on the Benches of this House in recent days.
	Perhaps I may make two preliminary remarks. First, I do not share the view that has infiltrated some speeches that we should in some way speak or vote tactically on this issue. The speeches and votes in this House are not part of the negotiations which no doubt will come; they are the basis on which negotiations, if they come, will take place. I urge noble Lords to decide on their view and to vote on that view, whatever it is. Secondly, I have to admit to a personal disappointment that there is not an option for a unicameral solution. A great deal of useful work has been done in various reports and papers, but all of it on the basis that we should remain bicameral. That may be right, but work should be done on the possibility of a unicameral solution. Mention is made in the White Paper of various countries with single-Chamber Governments—Portugal and New Zealand—but no reference is made to, or discussion had of, the profound debates that went on in New Zealand from 1950 onwards and which, above all, have taken place in Sweden. However, I accept that it is not a practical matter to discuss tonight. If we wanted unicameralism we could have it, but it would require a vast change in the procedures and structure of the other place.
	It is a slight irony that, just when the majority in the other place is demanding reconstruction of this House, on 1 November it adopted a small step towards that reconstruction of its proceedings by introducing a so-called Special Standing Committee system for programmed Bills—just the sort of direction one would move in if one were thinking of a unicameral solution.
	The debate in the other place, as I read it, concentrated on the second Chamber and on what was called its "lack of democratic legitimacy". That is based on a profound error because democratic legitimacy for the first Chamber, which in the end controls and puts through government programmes, must rest upon election. But a second Chamber is justified and legitimate if its procedures and composition are suitable and appropriate for the job that it has to do. After 30 years in this House it is my view, as it is that of many other noble Lords, that this House does a reasonably good job in revising and scrutinising the Executive and their legislation, and—I add this having some years ago been a member—in its committees for scrutinising European legislation, which is fast becoming a major part of our statute book. If that is right, there is no case for imposing by way of a mantra the same test on the second House as is imposed on the first. The first House has primacy and no one disagrees with that, while the second House must be composed and have procedures in place suitable for revision and scrutiny.
	Like the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, I pray in aid of this argument the honourable Member for Swansea West, the Father of the House of Commons. He said that there was no doubt at all that the primacy of the House of Commons was agreed, but if this type of proposal went through, that form of primacy would eventually disappear. He has rightly suggested that over the longer term, an elected or partially elected upper House would come into conflict with the first Chamber. Of course that is very likely, and to say that it just will not happen and then to sit back and vote for a completely elected second Chamber seems rather astonishing. He also suggested that hybridity was not a solution but an interim step towards the final aim of making the second Chamber wholly elected. Indeed, the 80/20 solution seems the worst of all in the longer term.
	In my submission, a large majority of the other place hastened to its vote for a totally elected second Chamber on the basis of a false test of legitimacy for a second Chamber. That completely eradicates any logic in the position. I do not say that in defiance of the other place; it is an argument. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, said that there was plenty of noise coming from another place. I do not want noise; I want to engage in an argument.
	In comparative terms, what has been voted for in the other House is a parallel to the Italian Senate. I bow to nobody in my passionate love of all things Italian, but the one thing my Italian friends would tell us not to have is anything like their senate.
	In conclusion, the argument becomes this: the test of legitimacy for a second Chamber is very specific and was misunderstood; the proposals for either a hybrid or a fully elected House will, in the longer term, contribute to constitutional and political chaos. The argument has not been answered in the debates so far. On that basis, it is our right and our duty to ask the first Chamber to look at the matter again and, from that basis, commence negotiations for a solution.

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, before I came into the House in 1997, I was a trade union official. I was initially an appointed officer with a job for life. Noble Lords opposite then changed the rules and, because I had some power and influence, I had periodically to submit myself to my members for re-election. It was always an unnerving experience, but the Conservatives were right; I have said that on a number of occasions since. It changed me, too.
	Therefore, when I came here, not only did I find the absence of accountability odd; over time, I held to the principle that it is wrong. Why? Contrary to my noble friend Lord Rosser—who is not in his place, but who said earlier that we have influence but not power—I believe that we have power as well as influence. I had not been in this House very long before I saw that power wielded very effectively by the hereditary Peers. The Labour Government had the largest-ever majority in 1997 and an unambiguous manifesto commitment to reform the House of Lords. The manifesto stated that,
	"the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute".
	We have had two general elections since then but, nearly 10 years on, a substantial block of hereditary Peers is still here, and I am very fond of many of them. However, we all know why they are still here. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, the Lord Chancellor when we were dealing with 1998-99 Lords reform Bill, had to reach an agreement to retain the more than 90 hereditary Peers who are still with us; otherwise he would have lost the Bill and other elements of the Government's programme would possibly have been sabotaged too. If that is not power, I do not know what is.
	We should acknowledge not only that we scrutinise, revise and amend legislation but that an increasing amount of important primary legislation starts its life here in this House. The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, did not mention it—it may be the passage of 30 years—but an increasing amount of primary legislation is starting in this House, moved by and involving people who have no mandate and are non-elected. We can also promote Private Members' Bills. The assisted dying Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, was mentioned earlier as an example of the fine work that we do. Regardless of its merits or otherwise, assisted dying is a highly controversial social issue which divides people and communities. However, it was promoted here without any mandate whatever and without any reference to the people.
	The primary qualification for anyone who seeks to legislate on behalf of the people of this country must be that they have been chosen by the people of this country. Ultimately, the right to vote remains the most potent protection for the individual against the powerful. Improving our efficiency and performance and minimising cost are important, but the principles which I have just enunciated are paramount.
	I therefore welcome the Commons' decisions last week, notwithstanding the efforts of the wreckers there. I also welcome much of the White Paper but, like others, I find parts of it unacceptable and would wish to amend it in a number of ways. For example, the parties must be required to make greater efforts to find people of greater breadth of experience, with specific expertise and from differing backgrounds, than we are seeing enter the Commons. If we are to have elections for this House, great effort should be made to try to change the way in which people are selected in the first instance and the way in which people are involved in their selection. I favour primaries. I pay tribute to the Conservatives for their recent efforts to look at innovative procedures for finding a wider and more varied range of candidates. Regrettably, we have not been doing as much on my side as I would wish to see, but I hope that, when elections arise, we spend some time trying to address that problem, which has been raised by many Peers in this debate.
	I grew angry during the debate as I heard different objections raised, but I have contained myself in the belief that many of those objections can be addressed satisfactorily if there is the will and the desire among the parties involved. It will unquestionably take time, but, contrary to what the previous speaker said, it is heartening that we have for the first time seen a meeting of minds. A change has taken place within a week of what happened in the Commons. Spokespeople on the Front-Bench are for the first time speaking on this subject in a way which they have not done previously. That is a step in the right direction and I hope that Members on these Benches will be willing to give them their support.
	I regret that the Lord Chancellor is not here to hear me, because I conclude with two questions for him, but I am sure that my noble friend the Chief Whip will pass them on to him. What are the prospects of securing consensus on many of the issues which have been raised in this debate? I look particularly to the leaders on the Benches opposite. My second question is more specific. I am in favour of elections, as noble Lords will have gathered, and support the view that codification of our conventions will be needed. I served on the first committee of the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, when codification was passed over very quickly, particularly by the late, loved Lord Carter, who was strongly against it. I note that the latest report, too, spends little time on it. As codification has not been attempted thus far, can it be done?

Lord Selsdon: My Lords, after 44 years in this House I find myself in a state of great excitement and enthusiasm because of what has happened in the past day or so. I often wonder where this excitement might come from. When I first came here, I came as an independent unionist Peer, and I have always felt that I was independent and believed in the Union. The great advantage of having been here for 44 years is that you can say the same thing that you said 44 years ago, and no one here will remember it.
	When I came in to the House, I found that we were to sit on the Benches opposite—but nobody showed me where to sit, so I sat down in the front, because I thought that the important people were at the back. Then I was told politely that I should not be there because I was not a right reverend Prelate—but I was then told that I could sit in any place in the House that I wanted, and that the House was a unified animal. Over the 44 years, I found that I was expendable—that I was not environmentally friendly. I realised, too, that I was getting excited because I was perhaps an ethnic minority group, which is terribly popular. But there was one thing that this House did for me: it taught me that you can talk to people.
	I go back to 1968, when all of this began, and I was asked to do a bit of work as a researcher on the future of the House of Lords. Your Lordships may remember that at that time Willie Whitelaw came here; we always called him Willie—everybody needed one. He suggested for the first time that the Peers might elect some of their own Members, as the Scottish Peers had. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, was totally against that. I should remind the House that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has been here since 1945 and is without doubt the best Foreign Secretary and one of the best Ministers that we have ever had.
	Then we moved on a bit. Of course, at that time the idea was that hereditary Peers should be allowed to sit but not vote, because it was all about the numbers game and voting. As time went on, we came to 1997 and then to 1999. In 1968 it was said that the hereditary principle should go, and in 1999 we all accepted it. But that was not the problem; the problem was the way in which it was done. However, one great thing came out of it. Even if I am environmentally unfriendly, there is one bit that I have so enjoyed in all this—when the noble and learned Lord the then Lord Chancellor, who was always going on about hereditary Peers and elected hereditary Peers under various Acts, made a statement in 1999 that,
	"the hereditary Peers who remain will have greater authority because they will have been elected ... A nice element of the compromise is that to stand in an election will be a novel experience for the 75".—[Official Report, 30/3/99; col. 207.]
	Your Lordships should understand that the term hereditary Peers refers to all those who are entitled to inherit a peerage. It is used in this House to describe people who are actually elected hereditary Peers or, in some cases, appointed hereditary Peers. It is not 92 in total—there are 92 who are elected, including the two statutory office holders, but another 12 are appointed. Four are appointed from these Benches, all of whom had been Leaders of this House.
	I give this only by way of a background, but I am proud to have been here—and I wanted to be properly elected, as I believed in those days that we should have a fully elected Chamber. I still believe that that should be an objective. The question is how it gets achieved. It will not get achieved through this strange piece of paper that we have been given, which is a form of Green Paper. It might have been called a White Paper, but in previous times White Papers, as I was told by one of my noble colleagues, were very useful. After you read them, if you put a rubber band round them and soaked them in water, they made very good firelighters in the winter. This White Paper is short on information and data, which is why I decided to write my own.
	I wrote my own and sent it out to as many people as I could, but the system here would not allow me to make major use of the photocopying machine. I typed it all myself—and the biggest worry was licking the envelopes, when I cut my tongue. That is why I look forward to an elected Chamber, if I could stand for election, because we might have proper back-up and facilities.
	What is going to happen? The excitement now is that we are in a very strong position to make some forthright and positive proposals. Parliament is both Houses—the upper House and the lower House. The weakness of the system at the moment is the other place, which is dominated by the Executive, who have too much power that is misused and who misrepresent the situation and, for selfish political reasons, promote things that they should not. We should get together with the other place and strengthen the right and position of the individual Member of Parliament to represent his constituency and his own thoughts and feelings. We should refuse to accept any legislation that has not passed a scrutiny commission on leaving the House of Commons. The time-wasting and the extra cost in this place are enormous.
	What happens if we decide suddenly to be elected? Noble Lords will notice in my White Paper that, if one is negative, everybody starts to become a mutual admiration society or self-preservation society and that the turkeys do not vote for Christmas. On the other side, you can look at this House and ask what it is made of—who knows what it is made of—but let me tell you what would happen if we got rid of it. First, 187 former Members of Parliament, who have served their country well and who were elected at one time, would walk out the door. Then, 189 privy counsellors would go—but the Government want to get rid of privy counsellors anyway, or so I am told. That would get rid of some parts of the newly elected Chamber. Then, 46 QCs would go, along with a range of legal people; the Law Lords would probably mostly go. As for the vicars—I am sorry, the right reverend Prelates—they might go, too.
	The knowledge at the base is quite considerable, and I take only one example—the subject of defence. In this House we have four or five former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, which is quite a lot. We have six former Secretaries of State or Ministers of Defence, two former Secretary-Generals of NATO and another 40 former Ministers in the Ministry of Defence. More than that, more than 170 noble Lords have served in the Armed Forces and know what it is like to have bad boots. They remember when the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders went to Korea in their shorts because they did not have time to get winter clothes. So we have a large knowledge of defence. I will not go through the whole lot, but I could do that with every single department. There is a wonderful base of knowledge here and, if we lose all that knowledge and experience, we will not be able to get it back.
	Therefore, we have a solution. We should sit down with the House of Commons. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, in that regard. He should not be surprised to hear that one thing I did when I first came here and got attacked for being a hereditary Peer was to say, "When I was a temporary shop steward in the Transport and General Workers' Union, and about to suffer from asbestosis, I remembered the words of my uncle, Stafford Cripps". Or I could have said, "I am a chinless wonder hereditary merchant banking Peer who ought to be put down, because I am environmentally unfriendly".
	In this House, we are more representative than anybody else. If noble Lords look at my paper they will find that in the regions there are more Members of the House of Lords than Members of the House of Commons. We have more women and ethnic minority groups and more of Jewish faith. It is an amazing place which could not have been created other than by accident—and I hope that the accident continues.

Lord Brennan: My Lords, I propose to call on a thus far unmentioned quality of this House—its fortitude. As speaker number 60 in the speakers list today, I am reminded of a colleague of mine who came to the Court of Appeal from Manchester many years ago. He was last in the list and, after a very long day, the presiding judge said, "This had better be short, Mr Smith", to which he replied, pulling out his railway ticket, "I agree; this is a cheap day return". So I shall keep it brief.
	Constitutional reform usually occurs because of great events. It is most unusual for it to occur in what we can call quieter times. We are in such a time. We have had constitutional change: devolution, the dispatch of most hereditary Peers, and the Constitutional Reform Act, creating a Supreme Court and the independent appointment of judges. There is no reason why Parliament itself should not be the subject at least of review with a view to reform. But that is Parliament, not just the House of Lords. Reform means change for the better. Both Houses of Parliament act together to serve the public, so any reform must be shown to be, first, necessary and, secondly, likely to be effective, better to serve the public.
	When we look at our parliamentary system, no one can seriously challenge the bicameralism entrenched in our constitution. A single Chamber would quickly become dictatorial; two Chambers, with their mutual respect and tension, should better serve the nation. Nobody can doubt that the House of Commons has primacy; it is the elected Chamber. The Parliament Acts ensure that primacy and the Salisbury convention makes it work. The question is therefore: why, if the House of Commons has primacy and is the engine of parliamentary democracy, do we turn to consider reform of the secondary Chamber first? That is extremely difficult to follow.
	Without comment, I ask these questions of the other place. Is it holding the Executive fully to account? Is its committee system properly serving investigation and the need for accountability for all forms of unelected government? Are its present structure and stature among the people commensurate with its constitutional responsibility? Is it attracting the best quality of candidates to be Members of Parliament? Is it, above all, influencing the affairs of the nation so that there is a third element in the public debate of this country, beyond the Executive and the media? When I hear the answer "Yes" to those questions, I shall say that it does not need reform. If I hear too many noes, I ask "Why not?". The House of Commons cannot currently plausibly argue that it is achieving the constitutional and democratic objectives that I have outlined. Its reform is necessary.
	What of the secondary Chamber—us? I shall talk not about civil liberties but about British constitutional freedoms: the removal of the ouster clause in the terrorist legislation; the rejection of the abolition of jury trial in certain contexts; and our regular debates on our Armed Forces, with specialist input from some Members of this House. Who could honestly and objectively say that this House has not served the public in the eight years since 1999?
	Reform, yes. Stop people coming. Reduce the number of people in the House. Give us fixed periods to serve as appointed Members. There is plenty to be looked at. But if asked on your Lordships' behalf whether we are effective, I challenge anybody to say that we have not been in recent times. Is reform necessary? Why? When will it happen, how will it occur and what effect will it have on the dynamics between the two Houses? These are unknowns.
	Is it therefore appropriate that we should start our constitutional reform debate at the end, with the composition and election of the secondary Chamber, without starting at the beginning? What is the elected House doing for our nation? I issue this not as a rhetorical challenge, but as an invitation to both Houses—the other in particular—to remember their constitutional and democratic duty to the country. That kind of change requires time, reason and focus; it requires both Houses to ensure that the change, which is properly to be called reform, will benefit us all. Can we abide the prospect, over the next parliamentary Session or two, of Bills about our election and composition? Is there nothing more important in our constitutional debate than that? Is it not appropriate for each party here present in Parliament to put constitutional reform into the public debate, by way of a royal commission, a constitutional assembly or whatever it takes—not by newspaper opinion poll, but by rational debate?
	If, at the end of that, reform is necessary, I shall gladly look to it and determine whether I think it appropriate. This particular proposal is appropriate neither in its timing nor in its necessity. My noble and learned friend Lord Irvine of Lairg demolished the proposal yesterday with relentless logic. He was right. A better proposal may yet come, and we can look at it. But this is not the way to reform the British constitution.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, many of your Lordships have rightly pointed out that it is pretty silly to reform your Lordships' House before sorting out the House of Commons. After all, some 40 per cent of the electorate do not see the point in voting even in general elections any more, and modern Governments are formed by only some 40 per cent of the 60 per cent who bother to vote, or 24 per cent of the electorate. That 24 per cent has to vote for the whole of the Government's manifesto, which typically contains around 150 commitments. So it is hard to understand how modern Governments have the nerve to believe that their administrative programmes have the support of the British people. That does not stop them, of course.
	I am sure your Lordships would be disappointed if I did not point out that democracy in this country is now quite a bit sicker than that, thanks to the folly of our membership of the European Union. The former German president, Roman Herzog, has recently announced that 84 per cent of all national laws in Germany between 1999 and 2004 were imposed under the EU system of government. There is not much reason to suppose that the percentage is very different here, but so far the Government have only admitted that a majority of all law affecting our commerce and industry "originates in Brussels"—which is bad enough. The British Chambers of Commerce are somewhat less coy, and calculate that 72 per cent of the cost of regulation affecting business is imposed by Brussels.
	Whichever way you look at it, it is probably safe to say that a majority of our national law is now imposed by our membership of the European Union under its unique system of making laws, which is the very antithesis of our democracy. Let us not forget that EU law is proposed in secret by the unelected Commission, negotiated in secret by the unelected Committee of Permanent Representatives, or COREPER, and decided in secret by the Council of Ministers, where the UK Government are now reduced to some 8 per cent of the vote. That law is agreed by the EU Parliament, after which it has to be rubber-stamped by the House of Commons and your Lordships' House. It is then executed by the Commission. If necessary, the Luxembourg Court of so-called Justice can be relied upon to confirm the process of integration, and there is no appeal against its judgments.
	I say this system is the antithesis of our democracy because, as I have reminded your Lordships more than once, the central principle of our democracy is that the British people should elect and dismiss those who make their laws. They no longer do, not by miles. Twenty-four per cent of them elect a Government who boast 8 per cent of the votes in the Council of Ministers that imposes most of their law. No wonder so many of them cannot see the point of voting in general elections, or that they hold politicians and our political system in such low esteem. How right they are.
	I suppose I should also remind your Lordships in this debate of the big idea that gave birth to the fateful project of European integration, to which its devotees still cling: that nation states were responsible for the carnage of the two World Wars and for the long history of bloodshed in Europe, so the nation states, with their tiresome and unreliable democracies, had to be emasculated and diluted into a new form of supranational Government run by a commission of technocrats. Hence the Commission's continuing monopoly on proposing legislation and executing it once it has been through the Brussels system.
	I accept that that idea was honourable enough after the last war, but it has gone wrong and it is getting worse. "The project", as it is known in Brussels, was supposed to reach its fulfilment in the recent EU constitution. That was legally killed by the French and Dutch people in referendums, but the Eurocrats are not letting a small matter like that get in their way. They are surreptitiously putting most of the constitution into place, using clauses in existing treaties, illegally, to do so. One of those clauses is Article 308—to which I have drawn your Lordships' attention before—which allows the EU to take power only,
	"in the course of the operation of the common market".
	That clause was in the original 1957 Treaty of Rome, and was designed to permit small tariff adjustments and so on in the emerging Common Market. Now this article is being used to pass a whole string of powers to Brussels, and Her Majesty's Government—

Lord Tyler: My Lords, a substantial number of people take part in those polls and they are carefully balanced to get a proper sample. They are likely to be a more accurate reflection of opinion in the country than the one-person opinion polls that have been represented as being very effective illustrations of the public mood by a number of Peers during this debate. A further poll today has reinforced the public's support for this reform, specifically endorsing the votes of MPs last week. There was no mucking about, no attempt to put a trick question; there was just a straight question: do you support the views expressed by MPs? We should rejoice that the public want us to be more effective, and not simply prophesy doom. We should be optimistic that we can achieve this now that the Commons have voted to give us that opportunity.
	The debate in the Commons last week and the debate here this week have naturally revolved around the alleged challenge to the primacy of the Commons. Here I want to expand on the point made by my noble friend Lord Goodhart. We should be clear that primacy depends on five different elements: first, the direct election of all MPs, all at the same time in a general election; secondly, the need for the Government of the day to gain and retain their confidence; thirdly, the presence of the Prime Minister and most senior Ministers in the Commons; fourthly, the sole responsibility for supply and expenditure; and, finally, the longstop of the Parliament Acts.
	That is a more accurate description than the oversimplified description given a few minutes ago by the noble Lord, Lord Norton. None of it could be changed without the express agreement of both Houses of Parliament. The doom-mongers who told us that any elections to this House would automatically turn that all upside down are living in a fantasy world. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, who spoke so eloquently yesterday about the need to emphasise the primacy of the Commons. Surely it is wrong to suggest that that primacy relies simply and solely on the electoral mandate. As Mr Jack Straw and the White Paper made clear, the relationship between the two Chambers in Parliaments all over the democratic world varies enormously. It is quite unrelated to whether they are, or which are, elected.
	Primacy is more immediately significant in this debate. The royal commission, the Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform and the Joint Committee on Conventions have all reiterated its vital significance. In the report of the last, we said:
	"We were instructed to accept the primacy of the House of Commons. None of our witnesses has questioned it, and neither do we".
	In that report, we debunked the myth that somehow increasing the influence and effectiveness of your Lordships' House necessarily reduces the power of the other place. This is no zero-sum game. By giving enhanced credibility and democratic legitimacy to this House, we will strengthen Parliament as a whole in its prime responsibility—to check the overmighty Executive. As the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said so eloquently last night, we should not seek to be the rival or replica of the Commons; we should seek to be complementary—

Lord Tyler: My Lords, if the noble Lord reads my speech in Hansard tomorrow, he will see that I am trying to follow a consistent theme, which is not helped when entirely irrelevant interventions are made.
	Some Members of this House, and even more of the other place, have used primacy of the Commons as shorthand for primacy of the Executive. It is not the same thing. Before the 2005 general election, a distinguished group of Labour Peers produced a report advocating greater subservience of the Lords to the wishes of the majority in the Commons—that is, to the Government of the day. The group was led by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and included the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours, Lord Hogg and Lord Tomlinson. They were insistent that your Lordships' House should be more sensitive to the views of MPs, especially when they were backed by manifesto commitments.
	We should recall that all three major parties were committed in their 2005 general election manifestos to democratic and representative membership of this House. It is true that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were more specific than Labour, but surely some speakers have been disingenuous in suggesting that the Labour promise meant retaining the status quo. I also note that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, said in the 2003 debate that the role of this House, the second Chamber, is—and we must never forget this—to respect the right of the Commons to decide.
	How, then, will all those champions of Commons primacy and a manifesto commitment vote tomorrow, now that the House of Commons has voted so decisively for reform? Even more important, how will they and other Members respond to the opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill and then of a Bill? If this House gives the impression that it is fighting a last-ditch rearguard action to preserve the status quo with foot-dragging filibustering, so vividly described last night by the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, we will be in big trouble.
	My noble friend Lord McNally said yesterday that the status quo, or anything close to it, is simply not an option. Defiance of the Commons will lead us down a very dangerous path and make us miss the chance to negotiate from relative strength. The vote in the Commons last week for our abolition should surely be an alarm bell: 163 MPs voted for a single-chamber Parliament. If Members here do not recognise that we have a responsibility to respond positively and constructively, not only do we risk our good reputation with the public, but the number of MPs seeking our abolition will grow.
	Nothing would delight the abolitionists more than months of delaying tactics in your Lordships' House. Those Peers who value our bicameral system—I am one of them—should think carefully about the trap that has been set. Instead, after a century of indecision, we should be pressing the Government to get on with the job. We must have an assurance from Ministers that there will be no further nominees to this House, even from an outgoing or incoming Prime Minister, in the mean time. We must give no excuse to drag feet in that direction.
	I have campaigned throughout my political career for a more powerful bicameral Parliament holding the Executive to account and, thus, for a second Chamber that can match the quality of its work with the legitimacy required to make it truly effective. To that end, when the last attempt at reform collapsed, I convened a small cross-party group of reformers in the other place, comprising the late Robin Cook, Mr Kenneth Clarke, Dr Tony Wright, Sir George Young and me.
	Two years ago, we produced a report and a draft Bill under the title, Breaking the Deadlock. We all had similar ambitions for this, your Lordships' House, but obviously we had to compromise on our individual hobby horses. In the Commons debate last week, Mr Clarke referred to our group as "stout reformers". He speaks for himself in that respect. We were supported by 28 other leading members of both Houses, including former leaders of both the Labour and Conservative parties.
	I pay tribute to the work of Mr Jack Straw and that of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, not least because they have built on that cross-party consensus and the draft Bill and have sought to expand that consensus on the way forward. I am happy to offer them the draft Bill as a starting point. It meets many of the objections and concerns expressed by many Members of your Lordships' House in this debate. For example, with a third of the Members elected on each occasion, there is no danger of individual or collective challenge to the electoral mandate of Members of the House of Commons. Secondly, with the single transferable vote and multi-member constituencies, we can avoid the party patronage of the list system and give the real choice to the voter. That system offers the chance of genuine independents being elected.
	Next, we can guarantee that no one party ever has an overall majority in this, your Lordships' House—or, if it was renamed, the Senate. It would achieve a better regional spread. At present, two-thirds of the Peers appointed since 1997 come from London and the south-east. Any system that we proposed would ensure a much better spread. If there are to be any appointees, our draft Bill will make specific provision for a totally independent Appointments Commission.
	Incidentally, we also sought to reduce the size of this House. Given that only 25 per cent of the current membership asks 87 per cent of the questions and makes 76 per cent of the speeches and interventions, there is clearly room for a bit of slimming down. I am not going to deal with cost. I will have a private seminar with the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, later, but his figures are balderdash—I have been through them.
	What happened last week was only the beginning of the process. We should have no doubt that that process has started. Those speakers who believe that nothing happened last week are daydreaming. The choice now is not between doing nothing and doing the absolute minimum; it is between a predominately elected and a fully elected House. In the Commons debate last week, my honourable friend John Thurso—the only MP to have previously served in your Lordships' House, as he did with great dedication and distinction as Viscount Thurso—summarised the position. No one can accuse him of misunderstanding what we do in this House. Given his experience in counteracting what is usually a one-way street in this direction, he speaks with special wisdom. He concluded:
	"It is unthinkable that our great democracy should continue to live in a time warp of heredity and patronage. It is time to reform. It is time to put our trust in the people, and it is time, frankly, for a stronger Parliament".—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/07; col. 1451.]
	I agree.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I had a short conversation with a colleague of mine on the Front Bench the other day. I explained to him that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, had asked me to wind up this debate after hearing 130 speakers. I asked my noble friend what I should tell him. He said, "Tell him you've got flu". I did not have the courage.
	We have heard an astonishingly large number of fine speeches in the course of this debate. I cannot think of a single speech that has not demonstrated at least a degree of perspicacity. Many have stimulated the intellect, and some have stirred the emotions. I am thinking particularly of the speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and my noble friend Lady Miller of Hendon.
	I should say right from the start that, unlike the Liberal Democrats, the Opposition are having a free vote. I have said enough.
	I shall try to refer to as many of your Lordships who have intervened as possible but, for reasons which I hope noble Lords will agree are entirely understandable, I will not be able to refer to everyone. A number of speakers wondered whether another place really understood the implications of what they voted for on the grounds that no rational political organisation would vote for a diminution of its powers. I remember particularly the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, making that point in a very vivid manner. I have read the debate in another place. I thought that quite a large number of Members were very clear about the consequences of a vote for a fully elected or a mainly elected House. Not all of them wanted those consequences, but my impression was that they, by and large, knew exactly what they were doing.
	Whether I am right or wrong, it is plain that it is impossible to divorce composition from powers. The greatest flaw in the Government's White Paper is its attempt to do that. The White Paper says that the powers that your Lordships have are the powers that we ought to have, but that, in addition, we ought to be elected.
	There is no doubt that if we become an elected House this will have profound implications for the powers that we exercise, even if one assumes that the powers that we have now will remain. That point was made very well by the Joint Committee on Conventions at paragraph 61, which states:
	"Our conclusions apply only to present circumstances. If the Lords acquired an electoral mandate, then in our view their role as the revising chamber, and their relationship with the Commons, would inevitably be called into question, codified or not".
	My noble friend Lord Saatchi referred to the Parliament Act 1911. My advice to my noble friend on the question of implied repeal was somewhat more nuanced than my noble friend suggested, although I yield to no one in my respect for his fertile imagination. But perhaps it is worth just looking—at the risk of imposing a degree of tedium on your Lordships—at the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911, which states:
	"Whereas it is expedient that provision should be made for regulating the relations between the two Houses of Parliament:
	And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation:
	And whereas provision will require hereafter to be made by Parliament in a measure effecting such substitution for limiting and defining the powers of the new Second Chamber, but it is expedient to make such provision as in this Act appears for restricting the existing powers of the House of Lords'.
	The legislative intention at that time is clear. First, it had—because it could not at that time create a popular House—to do something about the political situation it faced. Hence, the Parliament Act, which was an Act of expediency. It is absolutely clear from this preamble that if and when your Lordships' House became a democratically elected House, the relationship between the two Houses would have to be reviewed. That is clear. So, given the fact that composition and powers are intimately linked, if we were to be popularly elected, what will the new constitutional settlement be between another place and your Lordships' House? That is ineluctably the crucial question we have to face; and until we have an answer to it, I really do not see, either in logic or in politics, how we can take the matter much further.
	My noble friend Lord St John of Fawsley quoted Bagehot, a writer with whom he owned up to having at least a passing acquaintanceship. My noble friend said that Bagehot recommended that constitutional change should be conducted carefully, slowly and by agreement. How I wish, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, that the Government had heeded that advice on previous occasions; a failure no better illustrated than with respect to House of Lords reform. To adopt an apt image conjured up by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, the Government have embarked on a long and hazard-infested voyage, but have neglected to take with them the appropriate navigational equipment.
	We understand from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that, before any move is made towards reform of the system of selection for your Lordships' House, there must be consensus. By that I understand that it is to be consensus not only between the political parties, but also between the Houses. The noble and learned Lord has proposed, and my noble friend Lord Strathclyde has welcomed, that the cross-party talks that have been taking place over the past few months be reconvened in the light of the debates in both Houses in order to consider what moves ought to be made next. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, and my noble friend Lord Higgins both, rightly, pointed out that there was a degree of controversy in both Houses about the appropriate route to take; and that therefore either the views of a selection of Back-Benchers should be represented at these cross-party talks. They proposed, alternatively, that committees of both Houses should be established to advance discussions because, since we are on a free vote, clearly what each individual Peer believes is crucial to the achievement of consensus.
	I want to ask the noble and learned Lord, when he replies, if he would kindly address this matter. For myself, I am not at all clear as to how he sees these cross-party talks developing. Quite apart from the question of the membership of this forum, what result does the noble and learned Lord expect to emerge? Does he expect, for example, to produce a new White Paper in the light of these discussions and in the light of the deliberations of the cross-party committee? I think that the noble and learned Lord has got the point and I am most grateful.
	The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, rightly emphasised that the vote which took place in the other place was an indicative vote. He went on to say that we cannot predict what view Members of another place will take about the whole question of election until they are presented with a specific proposal. He said that answers to detailed questions were an essential precondition of any discussions about the merits of an elected House.
	The details are extremely challenging for your Lordships' House and another place. Many of your Lordships spoke in much detail and with much wisdom about systems of election. In the time that I have, I cannot possibly reflect all the sophistication of the lines of argument; so I shall select a few points which I think are most germane to the question of an elected House.
	It is widely accepted that any electoral system that produces a low turnout will be wholly counterproductive. That point was made particularly well by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, but by others too. Here is a real difficulty: an election to your Lordships' House is not like an election to another place. We are not going to present the electorate with a mandate for power. When there is a general election, the parties compete, there is a competition of mandates and everybody understands that if the party they vote for wins, that mandate will be at the heart of government. In your Lordships' House, we will be asking people to vote for a House which has the power to delay legislation for one year at the most. That is not a very inspiring message to deliver to the electorate.
	We have some practical experience of this, as it is one of the problems that the European Parliament has had. It does not have a mandate; the political mandate in the Community is developed by the Commission under the control of the Council of Ministers. The European Parliament is simply there to democratise the process to the extent that it can. That is also not a very inspiring message to take to the electorate. If we are to have an electoral system, it has to inspire.
	I think that all your Lordships will also agree that the electoral system we choose must not be a clone of the electoral system in another place. If we simply reproduce what is in another place, we will provide no control over the Executive.
	A more controversial question was whether the elected Members should also be accountable to the electorate. My noble friend Lady Shephard made this point particularly powerfully in attacking the notion that elections should be for one term of 15 years only. She is absolutely right that that system does not produce accountability. I think I am right in saying that the idea of the 15-year single mandate came from a committee chaired by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. Its purpose was to engage the public in selection to the Lords without undermining the independence of the elected Peer. My noble friend Lord Wakeham put it very well when he described it as a system of appointment but by the people, not by the Appointments Commission. In a characteristically deft aphorism, the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, said that that meant that as a Member, one had nothing to hope and nothing to fear. Although I accept that accountability is absent, this system, in my submission, gets closest to providing the kind of independence that your Lordships enjoy at the moment.
	The controversies about the method of election will be endless. I shall not enter into them except to say that I was glad to hear the list system widely deplored. It is a disastrous system. Whatever other system we choose, be it first-past-the-post or some form of proportional representation, it must be based on constituencies. When should the election be? My own preference, unlike that of the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, would be for it not to be on the same day as the general election.
	We had a very interesting discussion about transitional arrangements, in which my noble friend Lord Ferrers played a prominent part. A number of your Lordships mentioned various dilemmas about cash for peerages, but my noble friend concentrated on the cost of dismissing Peers rather than appointing them. The costs by his calculations were colossal. One might summarise his observations as the cost of "disappeers".

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I apologise for that; it is getting late.
	My final observation is about a hybrid House. I share what I think is the view of the vast majority of your Lordships, that distinguishing between political Peers as between elected and appointed will not work; but I am more optimistic about distinguishing between political Peers and Cross-Benchers. I would be very reluctant to see the Cross-Bench element in your Lordships' House go. I was particularly struck today by yet another remarkable speech by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, who seems to be making a remarkable contribution to the role of the church in public life. He quite rightly reminded us that the principle of equality in our constitution is derived from Christianity and that the church had a vital role, therefore, in ensuring that democracy and freedom were upheld in our society. I would be most reluctant to support any arrangement which involved the departure of the Bishops from your Lordships' House.
	What is the problem that these proposals are trying to solve? It is not a problem of legitimacy, because it is quite clear, given the existing powers, that your Lordships' House is a legitimate House. As my noble friend Lord Lawson said, elections are not a pre-condition for legitimacy. Many examples that he gave established that principle firmly. The Government provide in their White Paper a 50:50 solution which is expressly predicated on the principle that elected and appointed Peers have equal legitimacy; so the Government themselves accept that appointed Peers are legitimate, at least in the text of the White Paper. None of my noble friends and other noble Lords who had been in another place could produce any evidence that a single constituent had ever written to them complaining about the legitimacy of your Lordships' House. Your Lordships' House is legitimate because it is respected; and it is respected because of the quality of its work. That is the basis of our legitimacy.
	The issue that we face tonight is complicated, or perhaps informed, by one matter that forms the basis of the speech given by my noble friend Lord Waddington. I am coming to the conclusion of my remarks. As your Lordships know, as long as the majority political party can control its Members in another place through the Whips, the Executive can do in effect what they like. There is a very good constitutional reason for this, the Government of the day have to deliver their electoral mandate, as they have—if you like—a contract with the electorate.
	The problem is that another place has two functions. First, it has to keep the Government in power and, secondly, it has to keep the Government under control. These two objectives are incompatible. The fact of the matter is that, almost invariably—indeed, I believe invariably—the desire to keep the Government in power always trumps the responsibility to keep the Government under control.
	This is a problem that goes way beyond patronage—because, at the heart of our constitution, is the integration of the Executive and another place. I find it very difficult to see my way around that problem. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe said that it was the responsibility of another place to control the Executive. If my analysis of the constitution is correct, however, another place is plainly incapable of keeping the Executive under control. Of course, it can create Select Committees and do all sorts of things, but that will be nibbling at the edges of Executive control.
	The consequences are quite dangerous for our constitution, as many of your Lordships have experienced who have taken an interest in recent anti-terrorist and criminal justice legislation. The control of the Executive is increasingly the responsibility of the courts; and, as a result, the judges are being drawn, whether they like it or not, into politics. Therefore, we must find some way in which to take the obligations off the shoulders of the judges—another, political, way in which to control the Executive.
	That is where the future role of your Lordships' House may well lie; and that is the argument for election. However, I have absolutely no idea whether this matter is of any concern to the Government. We need to know what the Government's constitutional objectives are before we start what will be a very steep climb to achieve a form of election that is appropriate.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I said in my opening remarks that this would prove to be an historic debate, and so it has proved. We have heard about 130 speakers over the course of nearly 19 hours. I think that I am the only person who has heard all 130 speakers—with the exception of my noble friend Lord Brooke, for which I apologise.
	The contributions from noble Lords on all sides of the House have been thoughtful, considered and in keeping with the importance of this issue both for Parliament and the country as a whole. As the noble Lord, Lord St John of Fawsley, said yesterday, if anyone had doubts about the value of this House, they would been allayed by listening to this debate.
	I am grateful to the House for the manner in which the debate has been conducted. It has been, and will be seen as, a testament to the best qualities of this House; qualities on which any reform package would seek to build. We will remember this debate, for example, for the return and speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine, the speech of my noble friend Lord Richard, the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the speech of my noble friend Lady Symons.
	In a debate with so many interesting and well informed speakers, it would be impossible to list them all or to respond to all the points raised, but noble Lords should be reassured that we have listened to all sides of the debate and will reflect carefully on what has been said here over the past two days. There have been considerable disagreements, but also an encouraging amount of agreement between the speakers on many of the key issues surrounding this difficult matter. There was, most notably, broad agreement for a statutory Appointments Commission, which almost all those in favour of either an all-appointed or hybrid House supported. There was also broad, if not unanimous, agreement that the work that this House does currently is good and adds value to the legislative process.
	My noble friend Lord Elder and the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn of Charlton, were rare voices in calling for a unicameral Parliament. There was general, although not universal, recognition that the remaining retained places for hereditary Peers should cease, many arguing for it to be done by stopping the system of by-elections. The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun of Abernethy, the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, were notable exceptions to this aspect of the consensus. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, reminded us that we agreed to the keeping of the hereditaries until stage 2 was in place. We agreed that in the White Paper and stand by it.
	There was also agreement that the reforms of 1999 have made this House more effective. When I hear, from all sides, how much of an improvement that reform is now held to be, I hope that I am permitted a wry smile when I remember how it was opposed at the time. I am glad to see that the wisdom of the approach taken by my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine and the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, as he then was, have proved justified.
	Our debate over the past two days has seen a large number of different points. Perhaps I can best respond by trying to group them into a number of important areas. First, many noble Lords discussed the effect on the debate of the votes in the House of Commons for an 80 and 100 per cent elected House. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, described it as "the thunder of reform". The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said, "the game has changed". The noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, suggested a vote here for 50:50 might be a signal to the other place that there could be common ground between the two Houses. The noble Lord, Lord Roper, said that the vote might have made the White Paper a little less white. The noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, said that we cannot ignore it.
	The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, said that the vote in the Commons did not decide anything. He is correct. No decision has yet been made on the composition of this House, not least because this House has not yet had its say. The votes in the Commons should affect neither our views being expressed nor how we vote. The effect of the Commons votes, however, means that after we have debated the issue we must decide whether there is enough common ground to seek, in discussion, a way forward. We must also consider how we can do that, and remember that the process must involve mutual respect for both Houses' views.
	Much of the debate over the past two days considered the role of this House and what it should be. Again, there was broad, if not universal, agreement, that this House should be a revising Chamber, helping the Commons to hold the Executive to account, and asking the Executive to think again on some issues from time to time. Much praise was rightly given to the excellent report of the Joint Committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Cunningham. Many, like my noble friend Lord Tomlinson, felt that the Joint Committee's report sets the current benchmark for how the powers of the current House should be exercised in relation to the Commons. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, said that the current House performs its vital role "impeccably". The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe—I apologise again to him for not being in the Chamber when he made his remarks—said that the Lords have both power and influence.
	This House does a good job, one that has been praised here and in the other place. I thought at the beginning of this debate, and I still do, that the current role of this House is the right one, and that the current conventions underpinning the relationship between the two Houses are the right ones. I sensed broad support for that approach across the House. If we can agree on that, and I believe that this debate has shown that there is broad consensus here, it cannot be beyond our abilities to conceive of a system, if reform takes place, where the current relationship between the two Houses is broadly maintained and the current conventions are broadly kept in place to govern that relationship. Our argument is that this House needs greater legitimacy to sustain its present position in our constitution. Those who oppose an element of election claim that the House's present position is entirely sustainable and that any election will destabilise Parliament, leading to demands for increased powers from the Lords.
	There were some telling interventions by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe. The noble and learned Lord told us that when he was the Leader of the other place he treated his opposite number in this House with, in his own words, "the utmost condescension". I wondered whether things had changed at all with his relationship with the current Leader of the Conservative Party.
	That brings me on to my third point about the effect of the changes in composition on the relationship between the two Houses. It has been suggested by many speakers, probably the majority, that introducing an elected element would automatically lead to this House seeking more power, gaining more power or exercising its current powers more assertively. The noble Lords, Lord Waddington, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, Lord Trefgarne, Lord Watson of Richmond and Lord Fowler, the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and my noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall all made that point. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said that an elected senate would use its powers more, which he thought would be a good thing, enabling the House to make a more effective contribution to the work of Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, speaking from the Cross Benches, thought that "power would accrue" to a reformed House.
	The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford—whom I am delighted to see in his place, representing the whole of the established Church of England, on which I congratulate him—said that belief in election, along with the powers as they currently are, is a "delusion". The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and my noble friend Lord MacKenzie of Culkein went further and suggested that an elected House of Lords would want to exercise more powers than the current House even theoretically has. The noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, wanted the House to have more powers anyway, I think even in the absence of elections. My noble friend Lord Sheldon suggested that the effect would be to lead to increased, even routine, use of the Parliament Acts.
	I suspect that those views, which are obviously widely shared throughout the House, are the pivot around which the debate eddied and flowed over the past two days, and I have three things to say with regard to them. First, while I completely accept that a substantial elected element requires us to revisit the conventions, it does not of itself lead to the undermining of Commons primacy. There may well be a demand for more power, and the conventions we currently have may well come under strain and might have to be further developed in the light of changing circumstances. That, however, is not the same as a rejection of Commons primacy.
	Several noble Lords referred to legitimacy coming from fitness for purpose. That principle applies also in the context of elections. Elections are for a purpose. We elect Members of the Commons to form a Government and to hold them to account. We elect Members of the European Parliament to consider and determine European legislation. We elect local councillors to exercise local powers. We elect Members of devolved Assemblies to exercise devolved powers. And we would elect Members of the Lords to exercise powers of scrutiny and revision.
	An electoral mandate is not open-ended; even Governments do not claim that. Yes, there would have to be changes in the conventions and in the way the two Houses work together, but the fundamentals would remain unchanged. The Commons would still form the Government, the Commons would still control supply and the Commons would still be able to use the Parliament Acts. Further, as my noble friend Lady Quin suggested, it would not be for this House to decide unilaterally that it could take further powers.
	Secondly, as I suggested, there is broad agreement that the House of Lords does a good job now and that its powers and the relationship with the Commons are in about the right place. The Government believe that further reform is necessary to ensure that any lack of legitimacy does not lead to the undermining of the respect and seriousness in which the views of this House are held. More legitimacy does not mean the same legitimacy as the Commons, as my noble friend Lord Whitty rightly said.
	Thirdly, as many noble Lords suggested, a more assertive House is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, as many noble Lords have hoped for, a more assertive House could strengthen Parliament. I agree with that. A reformed House of Lords could be more assertive without challenging Commons primacy, even if both Houses will in the future have to look afresh at the mechanisms for underpinning that primacy.
	I took note of the comments of those who referred to the conclusions of the Joint Committee—that the present conventions would hold only given the present composition of the House. The Government have already said they accept that changes to the composition of the Lords would call the current conventions into question, and that having brought forward those proposals for reform, there would inevitably have to be debate and evaluation about how the conventions might evolve. But there is a difference between looking at the conventions that underpin the House's actions and looking at the fundamentals of the relationship between the two Houses. A more assertive House of Lords would strengthen Parliament as a whole by helping the Commons to hold the Executive to account. It should not and would not undermine the supremacy of the Commons just through election, particularly of only an element of the House.
	A majority of noble Lords spoke in favour of a fully appointed House. Many praised the speeches of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Irvine of Lairg and Lord Howe—two outstanding speeches in favour of an appointed House. They made a strong case for a fully appointed House—a reform and a change from the status quo, for the reasons that I have touched on, but something that would be similar to the House we have today. There is much to be said for a fully appointed House. It can deliver much of what we want from a second Chamber. However, the one thing that it cannot deliver is democratic legitimacy. That is the Government's view, the view of the other place and the view of three important cross-party reports on Lords reform.
	Some noble Lords cited the views of the public on this. Some, like the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, told us that their postbags were empty of letters on Lords reform. Some, like the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred to polls on the public's view of Lords reform. Both fail to indicate the right course on this. Neither polls nor postbags determine the decisions. Parliament, and in particular our House, because it is the Lords, but also the Commons, have to make a judgment on what they think the right course on constitutional reform is. Without democratic legitimacy—

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: Not because he was a Tory, my Lords, but because the House was not elected. Without some degree of democratic legitimacy, this House will be vulnerable to the argument that, because it is unelected, wholly or in part, its views can be ignored or marginalised. That will inevitably lead to the effectiveness of this House being eroded. When noble Lords such as the noble Lords, Lord MacKenzie of Culkein, Lord Rodgers, Lord Steinberg, Lord Lawson, Lord Tomlinson and Lord Forsyth, the noble Baroness, Lady Knight of Collingtree, and others ask what the benefit of an elected element in this House would be, my answer is that it would give this House democratic legitimacy and make it stronger.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I am not sure to what the noble Lord is referring when he refers to the pledge. We are at a stage that is a long time before legislation. The Prime Minister, the Leader of the other place and I have said that we genuinely seek consensus. The search for consensus includes agreement not only between the parties but between the two Houses. With respect to the noble Lord, his question is utterly premature.
	The House as constituted does a good job but, as my noble friend Lord Whitty said, we need to raise our eyes sometimes from what it feels and looks like here in the House to what it feels and looks like to those outside. I agree with him that it is increasingly difficult for those outside and for the Commons to accept a wholly appointed body with the sort of powers that this House exercises.
	What sort of Chamber do we want to be? I have heard so many persuasive arguments in favour of the work that we do now and the role that we play now. For myself, I want a sustainable role as a revising Chamber. We can, with increasing confidence and authority, keep the consensus about our scrutinising, revising and delaying role, while changing the context that my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine referred to. Furthermore, the argument in principle for a wholly or partially elected House has been supported by a number of Peers, such as the noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker and Lady Quin, and my noble friends Lord Hoyle and Lord Dubs.
	Some have argued that there is no need for elections to be held to this place because of the limited powers of this House. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, who is in his place, made that point. However, this House is powerful. It has a significant and vital role in making the laws that govern this country. I am pleased that this House often compels the other place to do things that it would rather not do. I am sure that, away from the heated debate, the other place is sometimes pleased about it too. The debate in this House has been marked by the relative absence of the argument that democracy is right in principle for a legislative Chamber, but it is surely a powerful argument. Those who make the laws should do so with the consent of those who are subject to those laws. I believe that that is right, and I believe that the Commons think that it is right. If possible, we should reflect that in our arrangements.
	Arguments were made for and against a hybrid House. The most powerful speech in favour was made by my noble friend Lord Richard. Many have argued that a hybrid House will not work, including my noble friend Lady Symons and the noble Lords, Lord Higgins and Lord Armstrong of Ilminster. The noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, described the idea, somewhat graphically, as dead and decomposing. Some, such as the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, dislike the idea because they believe that there would be competition between the different kinds of Members. The noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, said that he feared a them-and-us culture in a hybrid House.
	Several noble Lords were concerned that a hybrid House would be inherently unstable and lead, eventually and inevitably, to a wholly elected House. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, having said that he did not favour a substantially elected element, argued that the problem was that once the unelected element began regularly to swing the vote against the elected element we would eventually arrive at a wholly elected House. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester made a similar point.
	One of the defenders of hybridity was the noble Lord, Lord Soley, who made a speech late last night, and so was insufficiently recognised for it. He argued that a number of other countries such as India and France had hybrid Houses but had not drifted towards fully elected Chambers. Others pointed out the value that a hybrid House could bring. Many identified the benefits of having Cross-Benchers and Bishops in a reformed House with an elected element. That is only possible in a hybrid House. Many noble Lords made the point that the conventions of this House and the manner in which it conducts its business now are signs that all Members will be treated equally in a reformed House. My noble friend Lord Giddens spoke in favour of a hybrid House.
	Several noble Lords suggested that the House had always been hybrid, including the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. I was intrigued by the reference by the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, to the same argument against hybridity having been mounted in 1958, when the life Peers were introduced. Those of us who have been here with both hereditary and life Peers have not found the problem. A hybrid House could combine the best of what we have—expertise, experience, non-party membership—with the benefits of election. It allows greater diversity and to make the reforms we need if our work is to continue to be respected outside this House.
	The vote for an all-elected second Chamber in the Commons was highly significant, as noble Lords including the noble Lords, Lord McNally, Lord Lucas and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, pointed out. It shows an appetite in the other place for significant and far-reaching reform. I have already set out the arguments in this place for having a democratic element in this House. Some of the consequences of a fully elected House of Lords have been pointed out by many noble Lords in the debate—no Bishops, no Cross Benches, a lack of expertise, more clashes with the Commons, more appetite for exercising power and for getting more power.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Knight of Collingtree, was concerned that the distracting effect of constituency responsibilities on elected Members would mean that the House would not have the time to undertake its proper function of scrutiny. Although entertaining, she slightly overstated the case. We do not propose that elected Members undertake the sort of constituency business that she referred to, and the electoral system that we proposed was designed to minimise the temptation on them to indulge themselves in that way.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, noble Lords must form a view as to whether or not people think it would be worth voting representatives to a House such as this that did valuable work such as we do. I think that they would be interested in electing people to a House like this.
	The next step is for this House to cast its votes tomorrow. The noble Lord, Lord Cunningham of Felling, asked the Government to listen carefully and take very serious note of the views of this House. We will. Once we have the views of this House, as my right honourable friend the Leader of the House of Commons has said, the cross-party group will be reconvened to discuss the next steps. The point has been very powerfully made by my noble friend Lady Symons of Vernham Dean and the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, that the cross-party group does not necessarily represent the views of the parties as a whole. I cannot give an answer now, but we need to consider what the noble Baroness has said, and I hope that we can give an answer fairly soon.
	There has been much to provide encouragement in the past two days' debate for those who wish to find consensus. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, we must build on the work done by the Cunningham committee in setting out the conventions to see how they would apply and how they would need to be modified for a wholly or largely elected body.
	There are various other issues that I do not intend to deal with, because it is getting late and I have been speaking for 26 marvellous moments. In his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said that this was not the end of a process but the beginning. That is right. Over the coming weeks and months we will work with our colleagues in the other parties to listen to the views of both Houses, to build on the work that we have already done, to consider this important issue further and to try to establish a clear way forward on reform of this House.
	The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, whose excellent report is the key reference work for much of this debate, said that the Government were right to try to seek consensus. I hope that all noble Lords will agree that, whatever the result of tomorrow's votes, we would be right to try to continue to do so. It is for this House to make its voice heard when it votes tomorrow; but when it has done so, then taking those views together with those of the Commons expressed last week, we will have to try to take this issue forward. We will respect the views of the other place and this House in seeking to take this opportunity for reform and improvement. I believe that there is an opportunity here for progress. It is the responsibility of us all to seize it.